Using the serial monitor

The Arduino board itself can communicate easily using basic protocols for serial communication.

Basically, serial communication is the process of sending data elements over a channel, often named a bus. Usually, data elements are bytes, but it all depends on the implementation of the serial communication.

In serial communication, data is sent sequentially, one after the previous one. This is the opposite of parallel communication, where data are sent over more than one channel, all at the same time.

Baud rate

Because the two entities that want to communicate using serial communications have to be okay about the answer to the question "Hey, what is a word?", we have to use the same speed of transmission on both sides. Indeed, if I send 001010101010, is it a whole word or are there many words? We have to define, for instance, that a word is four-digits long. Then, we can understand that the previous example contains three words: 0010, 1010, and 1010. This involves a clock...