For my project I need to be able to send and recieve data from an custom electronic board to my computer program (written in c). from what i've researched so far i need a UART chip. Is this true?

The device that im making will have a high(on) or low(off) state, there will be a multiple of these devices. Each device will have a unique address. I need to be able to recieve a message(on/off and address) from the device in real time, process the data using the program on the computer and then output the results onto an external lcd screen.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Hi,

It could be possible to use only one UART, with each of your on/off devices going to some logic around it. The devices do not need addresses, but id numbers. That way, the message is:

Interrupt
get id number
get state
end interrupt

That's one extra word of data to input compared with an input from a unique address, but it saves a lot of duplication in hardware.