"SoftwareSerial" PIO-based UART
================================

Equivalent to the Arduino SoftwareSerial library, an emulated UART using
one or two PIO state machines is included in the Arduino-Pico core.  This
allows for up to 4 bidirectional or up to 8 unidirectional serial ports to
be run from the RP2040 without requiring additional CPU resources.

Instantiate a ``SerialPIO(txpin, rxpin, fifosize)`` object in your sketch and then
use it the same as any other serial port.  Even, odd, and no parity modes
are supported, as well as data sizes from 5- to 8-bits.  Fifosize, if not
specified, defaults to 32 bytes.

To instantiate only a serial transmit or receive unit, pass in
``SerialPIO::NOPIN`` as the ``txpin`` or ``rxpin``.

For example, to make a transmit-only port on GP16

.. code:: cpp

        SerialPIO transmitter( 16, SerialPIO::NOPIN );

For detailed information about the Serial ports, see the
Arduino `Serial Reference <https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/language/functions/communication/serial/>`_ .

Inversion
---------

``SoftwareSerial`` and ``SerialPIO`` can both support inverted input and/or outputs via the methods
``setInvertRX(bool invert)`` and ``setInvertTX(bool invert)``.


SoftwareSerial Emulation
========================
A ``SoftwareSerial`` wrapper is included to provide plug-and-play compatibility
with the Arduino `Software Serial <https://docs.arduino.cc/learn/built-in-libraries/software-serial>`_
library.  Use the normal ``#include <SoftwareSerial.h>`` to include it.   The following
differences from the Arduino standard are present:

* All ports are always listening
* ``listen`` call is a no-op
* ``isListening()`` always returns ``true``