One glue-arduino to mux packages

Hi,

Pretend you're making a robot. You have one reasonably strong main board for fft, physics engine, etc. For each limb you have another card with a 328 (or whatever) that controls a bunch of servos and steppers. The daughter boards send and receive very small packages. Say.

(to limb)
struct {
uint8_t id_of_limb;
uint8_t command;
uint16_t argument; // perhaps not on all commands
}

Is it a bad idea to....

32bit MCP 1 <--> 1 Arduino mux 1 <--> n arduino limb

Arduino mux would be a glue-chip that bitbangs wildly on lots of serial (or possibly i2c) ports. This chip would also assemble the "packages" and send them properly to the 32" MCP (Master Control Program).

Is this a nuts solution? What alternatives are there? I don't want to do crazy bitbang in MCP nor limbs, and this seems reasonably price efficient all things considered.

use I2C and give each daughter board a different address'

This would be the obvious solution now that you mention it & I've actually read up a bit on i2c. :slight_smile: Thanks!