Serial.read has garbled data after a Serial.write

Question

I'm using the Serial1 of the Arduino Leonardo to send and receive data with another MCU. The following code will always retrieve garbled data:

byte streamReadResponse;
Serial1.begin(115200);
Serial1.setTimeout(9000);
Serial1.print(cmd);
Serial1.print('\r');
Serial1.flush();  //wait for all the data to be sent to the serial
streamReadResponse = Serial1.readBytesUntil('>', data, dataLength);

But, if I add a delay(50) before the Serial1 read, I would get the expected output. The value 50 was found by trial and error.

What am I missing? Why is the flush() command not working as expected?

Answer 1

I've finally found that when the MCU to which Arduino is talking to was initialized, it would send spurious data to the Serial - I guess it would start first with a lower baud rate, and then switch to the programmed baud rate of 115200.

To fix this, I had to flush the Arduino serial RX before sending any data. So:

byte streamReadResponse;
Serial1.begin(115200);
Serial1.setTimeout(9000);
while (Serial1.read() >= 0)
           ; // do nothing
Serial1.print(cmd);
Serial1.print('\r');
Serial1.flush();  //wait for all the data to be sent to the serial
streamReadResponse = Serial1.readBytesUntil('>', data, dataLength);

Answer 2

Usually, this kind of issue is the result of the several times by time unity of loop statements execution, with the baudrate defined for your serial i/o it's very possible that the flush are override by the new information input and the result are the "garbage" on that.

On my sketches, ever I put "idle function calls" in some points of the code to avoid this and works succesfully.