How can ROS communicate with my microcontroller?

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A simple approach is to write a ROS node that can read/write text messages exchanged with the microcontroller over a serial port and convert these serial messages to ROS style std_msgs/String messages. A separate ROS node can then be written to convert the simple text messages to specific ROS message formats (cmd_vel, odom, etc) based on whatever message protocol was defined for the exchange with the microcontroller.

Attached below is the source for code that I used for this purpose. There is nothing original in the code, but it may be helpful to someone new to ROS and Unix/Linux serial communication. Posting this type of a listing may be a bit unconventional for this site as short answers are generally preferred. Hopefully no one is offended. I would be interested in hearing if there are other successful approaches to the problem.

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//r2Serial.cpp

// communicate via RS232 serial with a remote uController. 
// communicate with ROS using String type messages.
// subscribe to command messages from ROS
// publish command responses to ROS

// program parameters - ucontroller# (0,1), serial port, baud rate

//Thread main
//  Subscribe to ROS String messages and send as commands to uController
//Thread receive
//  Wait for responses from uController and publish as a ROS messages


#include "ros/ros.h"
#include "std_msgs/String.h"
#include <sstream>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <termios.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#define DEFAULT_BAUDRATE 19200
#define DEFAULT_SERIALPORT "/dev/ttyUSB0"

//Global data
FILE *fpSerial = NULL;   //serial port file pointer
ros::Publisher ucResponseMsg;
ros::Subscriber ucCommandMsg;
int ucIndex;          //ucontroller index number


//Initialize serial port, return file ...