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Electrical & Electronics Engineering vocabulary · Digital Electronics and Microcontrollers

UART

Meaning in electrical & electronics engineering, with examples

abbreviationCommon term

In electrical & electronics engineering, UART means: Short for universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter: a hardware block that sends and receives serial data over two lines, TX and RX, without a shared clock.

In Turkish: UART, seri port, seri haberleşme birimi

How it is used

Pronounced 'YOU-art'. Used for debug consoles, GPS and modem modules and links between boards. Both sides must use the same baud rate, such as 9600 or 115200. TX on one device goes to RX on the other; RS-232 or RS-485 transceivers extend the distance.

Example sentences

  1. Connect a USB-to-UART adapter to see the debug messages at 115200 baud.

  2. Nothing comes out of the UART because TX was wired to TX instead of RX.

Common collocations

  • UART port
  • baud rate
  • debug UART
  • USB-to-UART adapter
  • SPIShort for Serial Peripheral Interface: a fast synchronous serial bus with a clock line, two data lines and a separate chip-select line for each device. It is used for flash memory, displays and ADCs.
  • I2CA two-wire serial bus, with a data line (SDA) and a clock line (SCL), that lets a microcontroller talk to many chips, each with its own address. It is common for sensors, EEPROMs and small displays.
  • microcontrollerA small computer on a single chip, with a processor, memory and input/output peripherals. It runs firmware to control devices such as appliances, sensors and motors.
  • firmwareSoftware stored in a device's non-volatile memory that controls its hardware directly, such as the program running on a microcontroller.

More terms: Digital Electronics and Microcontrollers

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