IO Ports

All AVR devices, like our Mega328, have ports. Usually they are a group of 8 pins that send or receive binary to or from the outside world.

There are three registers associated with each port.

1. The output register PORTX
2. The input register PINX
3. The data direction register DDRX.

For instance port B is made up of 8 pins PB0, PB1, PB2 ....PB7. It has three associated registers:

1. PORTB
2. PINB
3. DDRB

These registers live in the I/O register space just above the 32 general purpose registers.

Some good port pages:
Useful but about GCC.
Some good stuff here.

RS232 protocol

The RS232 protocol has been around for many years now. There are various versions and we have to be aware that non-standard applications are used often. The main aspects are the sockets and plugs and the packet sending rules.