Serial 3 vs Software Serial

Question

So I have a program that works great on the Mega, it uses serial 3 to read and streams out to the USB (I posted a previous question which someone answered) I tried to use Serial (D0) to read and then write to serial, which did not work. So now I am looking in to Software Serials

Is there a difference between a real serial and software serial as it does not seem to be working, It all runs a bit slower

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

const int DesiredRPM=300;  // Setting Desired RPM Here.
const int MotorPWMPin=4;
int inByte = 0;         // incoming serial byte
unsigned char Data_status=0;
unsigned char Data_4deg_index=0;
unsigned char Data_loop_index=0;
unsigned char SpeedRPHhighbyte=0; // 
unsigned char SpeedRPHLowbyte=0;

int SpeedRPH=0;
const unsigned char PWM4dutyMax=255;
const unsigned char PWM4dutyMin=100;
unsigned char PWM4duty=PWM4dutyMin;  // have to set a default value make motor start spining


SoftwareSerial mySerial(10, 11); // RX, TX

void setup() {
    pinMode(MotorPWMPin, OUTPUT); 
    Serial.begin(115200);  // USB serial
    Serial3.begin(115200);  // XV-11 LDS data 

    // prints title with ending line break 
    Serial.println("Arduino Neato XV-11 Motor control board v0.1 by Cheng-Lung Lee"); 

    // Pick your magic number and drive your motor , 178 is 178/255*5V=3.49V
    analogWrite(MotorPWMPin, PWM4duty );  

    mySerial.begin(115200);
}

void loop() {
    // if we get a valid byte from LDS, read it and send it to USB-serial
  if (Serial3.available() > 0) {
    // get incoming byte:
    inByte = Serial3.read();
    //Serial.print(inByte, BYTE);
    //Serial.write(inByte);
    Serial.print((char)inByte);
    decodeData(inByte);
  }

  if (mySerial.available() > 0) {
    // get incoming byte:
    inByte = mySerial.read();
    //Serial.print(inByte, BYTE);
    //Serial.write(inByte);
    Serial.print((char)inByte);
    decodeData(inByte);
  }

}

void decodeData(unsigned char inByte){
  switch (Data_status){
  case 0: // no header
  if (inByte==0xFA)
  {
    Data_status=1;
    Data_loop_index=1;
  }
    break;
  case 1: // Find 2nd FA
    if (Data_loop_index==22){
      if (inByte==0xFA)
      {
        Data_status=2;
        Data_loop_index=1;
      } 
      else // if not FA search again
      Data_status=0;
    }
    else{
      Data_loop_index++;
    }
    break;
  case 2: // Read data out

     if (Data_loop_index==22){
      if (inByte==0xFA)
      {
        Data_loop_index=1;
      } 
      else // if not FA search again
      Data_status=0;
    }
    else{
      readData(inByte);
      Data_loop_index++;
    }
    break;
  }

}
void readData(unsigned char inByte){
  switch (Data_loop_index){
    case 1: // 4 degree index
    Data_4deg_index=inByte-0xA0;
//      Serial.print(Data_4deg_index, HEX);  
//      Serial.print(": ");  
    break;
    case 2: // Speed in RPH low byte
    SpeedRPHLowbyte=inByte;
    break;
    case 3: // Speed in RPH high byte
    SpeedRPHhighbyte=inByte;
    SpeedRPH=(SpeedRPHhighbyte<<8)|SpeedRPHLowbyte;

    SpeedControl ( DesiredRPM ) ; // 
//      Serial.print(SpeedRPHhighbyte, HEX);   
//      Serial.println(SpeedRPHLowbyte, HEX);   
    break;
    default: // others do checksum
        break;
  }  
}


// Very simple speed control
void SpeedControl ( int RPMinput)
{
 if (Data_4deg_index%30==0) {  // I only do 3 updat I feel it is good enough for now
  if (SpeedRPH<RPMinput*60)
     if (PWM4duty<PWM4dutyMax) PWM4duty++; // limit the max PWM make sure it don't overflow and make LDS stop working
  if (SpeedRPH>RPMinput*60)
     if(PWM4duty>PWM4dutyMin) PWM4duty--;  //Have to limit the lowest pwm keep motor running
  }     
  analogWrite(MotorPWMPin, PWM4duty ); // update value
}

Answer 1

There are huge differences. The most important ones are:

• SoftwareSerial is half duplex (it can send or it can receive, it cannot do both at once)
• SoftwareSerial is blocking - while it is sending or receiving nothing else can happen

SoftwareSerial is very much a poor-man's serial port. It should only really be used for very low volume data (things like NEMA messages once a second or so) and only if you have absolutely no choice (and, let's face it, you always have a choice).