Patent ID: 7333536

Claim:
A system for automatically detecting at a microcontroller a baud rate of an asynchronous serial bit stream during an initial setup phase comprising: a transmitter; a predefined data set received at the microcontroller from the transmitter, wherein the microcontroller is capable of executing instructions embodied as software; and a plurality of software portions, wherein one of said software portions is configured as a transition detector for identifying bit transitions in the predefined data set, said transition detector generating an interrupt when an input signal differs from a compare register bit value and toggling the compare register bit value upon said generating, and another one of said plurality of software portions is configured as a timer triggered by said transition detector measuring a time interval between two predefined bit transitions, a storage element associated with said microcontroller for registering the measured time interval, and a look up table accessible by said microcontroller for determining a nearest baud rate value corresponding to the registered time interval.