Any higher level protocol over serial port communication ?

Question

We are running a course in robotics and Xbee is the most favorite communication protocol for the student. In last two years we helped them build around 62 various projects (40 more in pipeline).

All most all the projects involve sending different kind of data to the bot. Sometimes it is a 1 byte command where as sometimes it is a long string to be interpreted. Sometimes we face the issue of addressing a bot when one xbee is used in broadcast mode to send messages to a particular bot among several. Students use their creativity to address this issue each time.

I personally feel this is reinvesting the wheel. I wonder if any higher level protocol proposals exist for serial port communication and if there isn't any specific protocol design I wonder if if the worth designing one for the student needs.

Answer 1

Do you mean internal only protocol of your system? If yes, often embedded software engineers incline to roll their own protocols. Most of them talks that it lets them make most optimal system.

It is not ideal approach. I agree with you that it's good for students to learn good examples.

Unfortunately I don't know any protocol stack fitting well robotics application. But I advice you to try google's protocol buffer system, its able to simplify most efforts of building protocols engines, and it works with plain c too.