I see many projects using Arduino but most of them normally work with one or two devices/interfaces.
I mean, I would like to make an reef automation in my aquarium and I would like to make my Arduino (MEGA or UNO) to control:
The enviroment LUX via BHI1750FVI
A LED-board to power and/or dimmer some RGB dimmable LEDS
The ESP8266 to accept some scenarios via WiFi
Some display like OLED or even LCD
My question: seeing this document I'm a little bit confuse if Arduino can control all these devices/interfaces or if I need to utilize 2 or 3 different cards to perform these actions. Doing so, how can I get/set commands from the ESP8266 since I would have 2 or 3 different (and isolated I guess) microcontrollers?
This whole arduino thing is a bit more than just turning on a couple leds. One little arduino can handle what you are looking for without breaking a sweat.
Most of the examples you see are simple sketches to familiarize users with the platform. Users can then combine and tailor programs to fit their needs.
Of the tasks listed the only one that might take significant processor cycles is updating a
display (and that's only while it is being redrawn) - but if its not frequenctly updated it
should all be OK - just code in a style that doesn't hog the processor (no calling
delay() for instance!)
The document is about current limits which is only an issue if driving lots of high current
loads.