Do you use serialization formats for communication?

From	pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.arch.embedded
Subject	Do you use serialization formats for communication?
Date	2016-10-20 00:22 +0200
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<nu8rm7$4ka$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)

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I often have the need to exchange some data between two or more MCUs. I 
usually use I2C or UART as physical layers.

Normally I design a simple protocol between the MCUs: one framing 
mechanism (Start Of Frame, End Of Frame), one integrity check mechanism 
(CRC), and so on.

The payload is statically defined between the two MCUs:
- first byte is the version
- second byte is the voltage monitoring level
- third and fourt bytes are some flags
- ... and so on

As you can understand, both MCUs *must* know and agree about that 
protocol format. However during the lifetime of the product, I need to 
add some functionality or fix some bugs and those activites can lead to 
a review of the protocol format (maybe i need two bytes for the voltage 
level). Sometime, the two MCUs have a different version with a different 
protocol format implementation. In order to avoid protocol 
incompatibility, they all knows about the protocol formats used before, 
so they can adapt the parsing function to the real current protocol format.
As you can understand, it could be a trouble.

So I'm thinking to use a "self-descriptive" serializer protocol format, 
such as Protobuf, Message Pack, BSON and so on.

Do you use one serialization format? Which one?

Of course, it should be simple to implement (in transmission/encoding 
and reception/decoding) in a small embedded MCU in C language, without 
dynamic memory support.

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Do you use serialization formats for communication? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2016-10-20 00:22 +0200
  Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2016-10-20 01:30 +0300
    Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> - 2016-10-19 23:23 +0000
  Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2016-10-19 16:35 -0700
  Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2016-10-20 09:40 +0200
    Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2016-10-20 13:52 +0200
      Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Tauno Voipio <tauno.voipio@notused.fi.invalid> - 2016-10-20 15:58 +0300
      Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2016-10-20 15:45 +0200
        Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2016-10-20 18:06 +0200
          Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2016-10-20 23:39 +0200
            Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2016-10-20 21:01 -0400
              Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2016-10-21 08:56 +0200
                Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2016-10-23 07:05 -0400
                Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2016-10-23 18:23 +0200
            Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2016-10-21 13:04 +0200
            Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2016-10-23 16:07 +0200
              Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2016-10-23 18:33 +0200
    Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? kalvin.news@gmail.com - 2016-11-02 02:14 -0700
      Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2016-11-02 11:17 +0100
  Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? kalvin.news@gmail.com - 2016-10-20 03:30 -0700
    Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2016-10-20 23:18 +0200
  Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2016-11-06 14:49 +0000
    Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2016-11-06 14:58 +0000
  Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Vincent vB <embedded@spam.com> - 2016-11-11 09:37 +0100
    Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2016-11-11 12:25 +0000
      Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Tim Wescott <seemywebsite@myfooter.really> - 2016-11-11 13:14 -0600
        Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Chris <xxx.syseng.yyy@gfsys.co.uk> - 2016-11-11 22:00 +0000
          Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Tim Wescott <seemywebsite@myfooter.really> - 2016-11-11 17:51 -0600
            Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2016-11-12 00:07 +0000
      Re: Do you use serialization formats for communication? Vincent vB <embedded@spam.com> - 2016-11-29 15:54 +0100

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