Is it OK to Serial.print(message), when the USB cable is not connected to a host PC?

Question

Often I put a bunch of Serial.print( F("debugging messages") ) in my Arduino sketch.

Normally those messages go up a USB cable to a host PC so those messages can be seen on the serial monitor.

I want to install this Arduino as part of a stand-alone system far from any PC and plug the "host" end of the USB cable into a wall-wart USB charger.

Without anything to accept those messages, the buffer on the Arduino eventually fills up, right? Do I need to do anything to keep the Arduino from overflowing and crashing when it's not connected to a host PC?

Does it make any difference if I'm using a (1) "single-chip" Arduino-compatible where the processor includes on-chip USB, vs. (2) an Arduino-compatible with separate "USB interface chip" and "processor chip"? (By "single-chip Arduino-compatible", I mean things like the Arduino Leonardo, Arduino Yún, LilyPad Arduino USB, Arduino Micro, the Teensy-LC, etc.)

Answer 1

It is OK to write out serial data with nothing connected.

In case (2) "Arduino + USB interface chip", the arduino has no idea if anything is connected or listening to the serial port. The code will transmit the bytes and act exactly the same whether plugged in to anything or not.

In case (1) "arduino with built in USB" it has some idea, but just drops bytes that are going to be transmitted when the USB port is not connected.

Hardware serial (case 2) has an output buffer, but that just makes the program a little faster. When the buffer is empty, a call to serial.{print, write} will place bytes in the buffer and move on. When it's full, Serial.{print,write} will wait until there is enough room to put the rest of the message in the buffer and move on. The hardware UART and interrupts it generates will keep taking bytes out of the buffer and transmitting them at a constant rate whether something is plugged in or not. In any case, the buffer is a fixed size and will never overflow.

As far as I can tell USB-Serial (case 1) only buffers incoming data. Since the calls to Serial.{print, write} do nothing when not connected, they may take less time than they would otherwise. If your code is really unsafe about timing, that could cause a problem, but I doubt it will.