I am looking to build a simple avionics package for an ultralight airplane using an arduino controller. The physical controls of the plane are all mechanical and so this controller will be used for collecting sensor data that may be useful to the pilot during flight (such as temp, humidity, altitude, airspeed, bearing, etc.). The question I have is related to the sensor capacity of the arduino board; some of the sensors I want to implement use the same pins on the arduino. I've seen examples of simple temperature sensors wired in series and hooked through the board's serial interface but I was wondering if this can be done with any amount/type of sensors... specifically, I would like to connect a Sparkfun WeatherShield (SparkFun Weather Shield - DEV-13956 - SparkFun Electronics), an IMU breakout board, and a differential pressure sensor all to a single arduino. Is this possible?
A solution depends on the sensor interfaces (analog, digital, SPI, I2C, serial...). Shields use fixed pins, so that conflicts arise when multiple shields use the same pins. Breakout boards are more flexible, they allow to wire the signal lines at will.