8 bits representation - arduino

Question

My question will be Arduino specific, I wrote a code that turns array of characters (text) into binary string, but the problem is that the binary representation is not 8 bits, its sometimes 7 bits, 6 bits or even 1 bit representation (if you have a value of 1 as decimal). I'm using String constructor String(letter, BIN) to store the binary representation of letter in a string.
I would like to have a 8 bits representation or even a 7 bits representation.
String text = "meet me in university";
String inbits;
byte after;
byte bits[8];
byte x;
char changed_char;
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
Serial.println("Press anything to begin");
inbits = convertToBits(text);
}
String convertToBits(String plaintext)
{
String total,temp;
total = String(plaintext[0],BIN);
total = String(total + " ");
for (int i=1;i<plaintext.length();i++)
{
temp = String (plaintext[i],BIN);
total = String(total + temp);
total = String(total + " ");
}
Serial.println(total);
return total;
}

Answer 1

If the length of the argument string is less then 8, prepend "0"s until it is 8 bits long.

Answer 2

You could do something similar to the following:
void PrintBinary(const std::string& test)
{
for (int c = 0; c < test.length(); c++)
{
unsigned bits = (unsigned)test[c];
for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)
{
std::cout << ((bits >> (7 - i)) & 1U);
}
std::cout << " ";
}
}
Modifying the above example to use String and Serial.println instead of std::string and std::cout should be trivial. I don't own an arduino to test with so I couldn't modify your code and test if the above is possible in the environment you work in but I assume it is.
PrintBinary("Hello"); //Output: 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111

Answer 3

String(letter, BIN) doesn't zero pad the string. You have to do it yourself.
You need to prepend the 0 character until your binary string is 8 characters long.
String convertToBits(String plaintext)
{
String total, temp;
total = "";
for (int i=0; i<plaintext.length(); i++)
{
temp = String (plaintext[i], BIN);
while (temp.length() < 8)
temp = '0' + temp;
if (i > 0)
total = String(total + " ");
total = String(total + temp);
}
Serial.println(total);
return total;
}