Need advice on ProAtom 24 seiral communication

[Robotboy86]

I am looking to use the BasicAtom Pro24 as a sub system for a more advanced robot, its basic job will to be taking in input from 4-6 sensors and making motors adjusting of some sort.  The other thing I was looking at for this, is communication to the main CPU.  I was planning to do this via Serial, but there are problems:

1.  The basic stamp has to sit and wait for a communication.

2.  While waiting, it does nothing else.  This would result in robotic failure

So I was browsing other basic options. and saw the basic atom pro 24m..

it claims to have a buffered serial communication system.. 

which would basically allow it to recieve serial data while not listening, correct?

Could someone explain what it means by buffered?

[KambeiX]

robotboy, most microcontrollers with hardware serial communications (like pic, avr, and stamps) have a buffer that recieves a character and holds it on memory while you decide what to do with it.

I don't know with basic stamps, but with "normal" microcontrollers, there are interrupts that trigger when a serial commmunication is detected and also they have special registers for that, so in your code you ask "Is there data in the buffer?" and it will return either a 0 or 1.

Look in the PBASIC reference if there is an interruption for serial communications or at least a command that will let you check if there is data available.

[Robotboy86]

Thats what I had thought, but I read about the basic stamps that they had nothing like that, so I was unsure. 

Appreciate the response,

Cheers

[Admin]

Just send your serial data continuously so the robot wont have to wait?

Or have your robot use the last serial command until it recieves a new one.