Understanding How Arduino Serial Port Send Line Feed LF, Carriage Return CR and New Line Character

Arduino Serial Port Line Ending Characters

Arduino Serial Port write function send all the character in the string specified.

Many times we need to send some additional character after sending the specified string. Suppose you are interfacing the Arduino with the devices like GPS, GSM etc.

In these cases you use serial port to send command to these devices, and these devices requires command ending character like carriage return CR and line feed LF.

Carriage return CR and line feed LF are not alpha-numeric characters, it is really tricky to send with Arduino serial port.

Both carriage return CR and line feed LF are defined in the ASCII code and it can be sent with its decimal values.

Both carriage return CR and line feed LF are known as control characters, they don’t have any visual meaning.

How Arduino Serial Port Can Send or Write Carriage Return CR Character

To send the CR carriage return character you can use write() function with escape character or with its decimal value.

How Arduino Serial Port Can Write Line Feed LF and New Line Character

To send the LF line feed or new line character you can use write() function with escape character or with its decimal value.

Arduino Serial Print New Line Character

In place of write() function you can use print function as well to send the CR and LF.

How Arduino Serial Monitor Can Send Carriage Return CR and Line Feed LF Character

The serial monitor application is build-in in the Arduino IDE. In the serial monitor tool, when Arduino send the new line, the next printable character will be displayed in the new fresh line.

The serial monitor application is also able to send the CR and LF special characters.

In the figure 1 shows the option for line ending character (near baud rate option).

In this option there are four choices-

• No Line Ending – It means no additional character sent as line ending.
• Carriage Return – Send \r in the end, after the specified string (CR).
• Newline – Send \n after the specified string (LF).
• Both NL & CR – Send both \r and then \n in the end.

Arduino Serial Monitor Test with Line Ending Character

To test the CR and LF character we create a small loop-back code, which actually send back, everything it receives.

In this code we have used Serial.println() function to send back the received data.

/*
    Serial port test with serial monitor tool
	Author: Nilesh Chaurasia
    https://elextutorial.com
*/
void setup() 
{
  Serial.begin(9600); // Set the baud rate to 9600
}
void loop() 
{
  if(Serial.available()) // Check if received
  {
      int data1 = Serial.read(); // Read if received
      Serial.println(data1); // Send back to PC/Laptop
  }
}   
				 

In the first test (No line ending) we type “abc” and click on send button. The serial monitor send only three characters and receive back (97,98 and 99) which are actually decimal equivalent of the ASCII codes of a,b and c.

In the second test (Carriage Return) we again type “abc” and click on send button. The serial monitor send now four characters and receive back (97,98,99 and 13). 13 is actually decimal equivalent of the ASCII code of CR.

In the third test (Newline) we again type “abc” and click on send button. The serial monitor send now four characters and receive back (97,98,99 and 10). 10 is actually decimal equivalent of the ASCII code of Newline (LF).

In the fourth test (Both NL & CR) we again type “abc” and click on send button. The serial monitor send now five characters and receive back (97,98,99,13 and 10). 13 and 10 are actually decimal equivalent of the ASCII code of NL and CR.