I've just started to sketch out some ideas for a project I want to start working on and am curious to get some more experienced people's input...
Basically I plan on having approx 30 analog sensors (probably photocells embedded in different objects that people can interact with).
I can get the 30 sensors input into two arduino mega boards (16 analog pins per board). My question how easy is it to have two (or more) arduino boards plugged into the same computer and to differentiate between the various inputs on the individual boards? Does the serial communication get muddled/mixed up/confused?
I had a quick test using a couple of arduino uno boards and the maxuino/firmata setup and the Arduino2Max examples. Both seemed to work fine when I had just one board plugged in, but as soon as I hook up the 2nd, both patches would not give accurate results or would just stop updating completely. I also had a look on these forums to see any other examples where people have multiple boards hooked up via usb to the same computer and wasn't able to find anyone else using this setup so I'm getting that feeling that I'm taking the wrong approach
You could just use one Arduino, and it doesen't even have to be a Mega, with some analog multiplexors like CD4051 (8 channel) or CD4067 (16 channels).
There are lot's of examples around for using them.
AWOL:
A lot depends on how often you want updates.
My idea is to have human interaction w/ the photocell sensors (covering w/ hands) to to drive updates to the interface/visuals in my software. Think of an animated tag cloud from a blog: the darker the reading the more weight the item associated w/ that particular sensor gets. It needs to be an organic looking feel (and I can fudge most of that in software) and reckon I'll need to get the readings of all the pins at ~60 per second.
If I were to split two of the arduino uno's analog pins w/ the CD4067 that MikMo mentioned to get my 30 inputs, would I recieve updates at a fast enough rate?
