Question More than one serial port on a Zero-W ?

[Spinachy]

I want to connect both an Adafruit GPS breakout (Adafruit ID: 746) and an Adafruit-sourced Lidar(Adafruit ID: 4010) to my Zero-W for a simple robot. They both use serial UART. Should I try a USB to Serial converter, or should I wire up something like a MAX3111 SPI to UART/RS232 converter chip?

 

[kanewolf]

USB adapters are OK, but you have to be careful on latency. I would think the LIDAR would be more important for low latency data I/O. The GPS data isn't going to change that much in a short period unless the GPS unit also has an inertial sensor or compass that you need for additional navigation input.

 

[Alabalcho]

You can (and probably, should) use sensors which use SPI or I2C connection instead of plaon old RS232. That's especially true for high-speed data (like probably your LIDAR).