I need to make two arduinos talk to each other. One will handle input controls and the other will recieve the controls and move servos and control ESCs. I want to do the communication over fiber optic.
Right now im looking at ethernet to fiber converter as it seems to be the cheapest off the shelf solution and it should let me broadcast video too fairly easy.
Is there a fairly straight forward way to get arduinos to talk to each other over ethernet?
How far?
Why Fibre and not wireless or twisted pair?
Do you have fibre-optic "cable" or other equipment already in place?
What do you want to communicate, how fast and what volume?
Is it one-way or two-way communication?
Are the UARTs available to handle this communication, or are all your UARTs spoken for doing other things?
Why Fibre and not wireless or twisted pair? wireless is just not an option, twisted pair distance and interference
Do you have fibre-optic "cable" or other equipment already in place?
yes I already have two gigbyte ethernet to fiber converters
What do you want to communicate, how fast and what volume?
Basically you'll have a joystick at one end and a robot at the other end
Is it one-way or two-way communication?
For the arduino to start with It will be just one way communication. Maybe down the road two way.
Are the UARTs available to handle this communication, or are all your UARTs spoken for doing other things? The "rx" arduino will be talking to a On Screen Display break out board to be honest I'm not sure what this will take up all the bits are on order.
RS-422 or RS-485 over twisted pair will probably give you better reliability over long distances than copper Ethernet. Maybe even more speed: the Wiznet chip is not exactly a "speed demon".
Laying fiber may count as "gilding the lily", even at today's high gold prices ;D.
This would be my initial recommendation. This will work over twisted pair up to 1,000 metres and up to 2 MBit (not both at the same time). It's cheap and easy. It should be possible to use New Software Serial with it (I don't know if the software serial libraries have hooks for driver enable in half duplex).
I am using this method to control my ROV -- if you search around a bit you'll see some of the threads discussing this.