Replace Serial with Debug?

[joshgoebel]

What if we changed...

#ifdef FREE_RAM
  Serial.print("Ram available: ");
  Serial.print(freeRam());
  Serial.println("/1024 bytes");
#endif

to

#ifdef FREE_RAM
  Debug.print("Ram available: ");
  Debug.print(freeRam());
  Debug.println("/1024 bytes");
#endif

A new Debug object could be introduced that checked for charge_state of BATTERY and if the user isn't plugged into USB all the serial statements short-circuit without wasting any time... and if it is plugged in then Serial.whatever runs as it usually would. The call overhead would be nothing compared to the Serial overhead itself.

Would that help?

[dhiltonp]

That would be quite nice from a run-time perspective. It wouldn't do anything for the string consumption of flash/ram, of course.

It's definitely worth considering.

[joshgoebel]

Right, if they don't turn them off in the compile it's about the best you could do.