I'd like to make RC car and remote controller via bluetooth (HC06)

Question

At first, I tried to make whole code for an RC car and remote controller, but I realized that it's difficult for me since I have few ideas about C++. So, I changed a few things like turning on the LEDs with switches and servomotors with potentiometer. Here are my code.

Remote controller

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

SoftwareSerial BTSerial(2,3);
int sw1=13;
int sw2=12;

void setup() {
  BTSerial.begin(9600);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(sw1, INPUT_PULLUP);
  pinMode(sw2, INPUT_PULLUP);
}

void loop() {
  int a = analogRead(A0);
  int map_a=map(a,0,1023,0,255);
  int state1=digitalRead(sw1);
  int state2=digitalRead(sw2);

  BTSerial.print('S');
  BTSerial.print(map_a);
  BTSerial.print(',');
  BTSerial.print(state1);
  BTSerial.print(',');
  BTSerial.print(state2);
  BTSerial.print('E');
  delay(100);
}

< RC CAR >

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

SoftwareSerial BTSerial(2,3);

byte buffer[255];
int bufferPosition;


void setup() {
 BTSerial.begin(9600);
 Serial.begin(9600);
 bufferPosition=0;

}

void loop() {
  {
    if(BTSerial.available()>0){
    unsigned char data = (unsigned char)BTSerial.read();
    buffer[bufferPosition++]=data;
    Serial.println(data);
    delay(100);
    }
}
}

When I checked the result from Serial.println(data) from RC car code, it was trash...

Can you instruct me what's wrong with this code?

Answer 1

There are some fundamental problems in the code - bufferPosition never stops increasing (until it reaches 32768) and so buffer will overflow. However, neither of these two problems are causing the 'trash', as you are outputting the result of reading the serial, not anything from the buffer.

The problem lies in the casting of the result from BTSerial.read() to unsigned char.

Serial.print() does not like this. Actually it doesn't care, but it won't give you what you expect. It just prints out the value stored - so 'a', which is 97, will come out as '97' on the serial monitor. Serial.print() only outputs ASCII characters when you give it a char or char[].