PulseWire Arduino Communications Library

I did not find a library that could be used to transmit any arbitrary data with the help of an Infrared Transmitter and Receiver module. Later I realized that this could be useful with any sceanrio where we want to transmit binary data wirelessly or over a wire (e.g with “433 MHz RF modules" or via ultrasound).

In order to transmit data, it needs to be encoded into pulses and these pulses then need to be decoded on the receiver side: The most popular methods are Manchaster Encoding, Pulse Distance, Pulse Width and NRZ Encoding. Codecs are providing this functionality.

On the receiver side, we need to be able to recognise when a signal starts. This can be done with a Preamble that descibes the starting pulses with their timings.

In addition, specific to transmitting IR data, we need to modulate the signal with a carrier frequency (typically 38000 Hz). This can be done in different ways, so different alternaive implementations for this are provided.

Key Features

• Modular Codec architecture.
• Flexible transmission frequencies
• Injectable, protocol-specific preamble detection and generation
• Arduino Stream API for easy integration with configurable framing modes and frame size
• Protocol-agnostic drivers for generic Arduino
• Hardware abstraction via OutputEdge for transmission and reception
• Examples for all supported platforms and protocols
• An untested draft implementation for IR Protocols

Code Example

Here is a simple Arduino Sketch that sends binary manchester encoded data from one pin and receives it on another pin on the same microcontroller. Just connect the two pins with a wire.

Further exampes can be found in the examples directory

#include "Codecs.h"
#include "DriverArduino.h"
#include "Transceiver.h"

const uint8_t rxPin = 22;
const uint8_t txPin = 23;
int baud = 8000;
DigitalSignal digitalSignal;
ManchesterPreamble preamble;
ManchesterCodec codec(preamble);
TxDriverArduino tx(codec, txPin, digitalSignal);
RxDriverArduino rx(codec, rxPin);
Transceiver transceiver(rx, tx);

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  Logger::setLogLevel(Logger::LOG_LEVEL_INFO);
  transceiver.begin(baud);
}

void loop() {
  // send a frame
  const uint8_t frameSize = 10;
  const uint8_t data[] = {0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05,
                          0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0A};  // Test data to encode

  size_t written = tx.write(data, frameSize);
  if (written != frameSize) {
    Serial.println("Error: Failed to write full frame");
  } else {
    Serial.print("Written:  ");
    for (size_t i = 0; i < frameSize; ++i) {
      Serial.print((uint8_t)data[i], HEX);
      Serial.print(" ");
    }
    Serial.println();
  }

  // receive a frame
  size_t receivedCount = 0;
  uint8_t receiveBuffer[frameSize]{};

  receivedCount = rx.readBytes(receiveBuffer, frameSize);
  Serial.print("Received: ");
  for (size_t i = 0; i < receivedCount; ++i) {
    Serial.print((uint8_t)receiveBuffer[i], HEX);
    Serial.print(" ");
  }
  Serial.println();

  // delay(1000);
}

Documentation

• Architecture
• All Classes

Installation in Arduino

You can download the library as zip and call include Library -> zip library. Or you can git clone this project into the Arduino libraries folder e.g. with

cd  ~/Documents/Arduino/libraries
git clone https://github.com/pschatzmann/PulseWire

I recommend to use git because you can easily update to the latest version just by executing the git pull command in the project folder.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Submit issues or pull requests to the repository.