I am not sure that this can be done, so bear with me as I describe what I am trying to do. Also, I posted the same question over at Ladyadas site, not knowing which site might be better suited for answering my question. So if you answered my question over there already, many thanks! Now to my question:
I have a Web Energy Logger (WEL) from Phil Malone in my home, which is a Rabbitt-core micro-controller with one 1-wire bus connection, a couple of digital inputs, etc. The WEL captures the 1-wire data on the network, then sends it to the WEL server in Phils house, where it gets incorporated into images, graphs, etc. See ourcoolhouse.com for some of the systems out there.
The WEL is not an inexpensive device and therefore I would like to take steps to protect it as much as possible from things like lightning strikes. As a result, I'd like to keep weather instruments completely separate from the WEL... While there are optical approaches to I2C communication, I think a wireless solution is even more compelling and much easier to install.
Since the 1-wire bus is too time-sensitive to allow wireless communications, I am investigating whether setting up a pair of Arduinos as proxy I2C devices might work instead. They would communicate serially and transfer data in 1-minute intervals. The transmitting Arduino would be set up to automatically scan and read the values of any I2C device attached to it. It would then transmit the device IDs and the associated I2C data to the other Arduino.
The receiving Arduino would emulate all the I2C devices for whom it got data, storing the I2C device number and the values, allowing them to be "discovered" by the WEL, and transmitting the values as needed.
Is such a solution conceivable? I ask since it may or may not be possible for me to use an ethernet shield to talk directly to the WEL server. Such a solution would be preferable, I think, but it also depends on Phil to allow me to do such a thing - he may feel funny about having a non-WEL device posting to his WEL-server, after all.
Many thanks for any insights you all may have, Constantin