When [Bill Porter] works on a project, he says that he typically writes his own NMEA standard communications protocols ... packetized serial communications between two Arduino boards.

So he tried his hand with some really small SMD parts by building this USB to serial Arduino programmer ... doesn’t fully implement the communications protocol of the 232, but it does work ...

Then, an Arduino board might be exactly what you ... Out of the box, the Rev3 comes with three onboard methods of communication: serial, I2C, and SPI. These are all wired connections, meaning ...