how many controls can the duemilanove have?

hello all arduino-nuts,

as the title suggests, this is the question i am asking.

basically i am going to be building a controller, a pretty big one by my drawings. this will control logic, ableton, max and a wealth of other things.
i am near finishing designing the controller, but it keeps changing with taking and adding things on depending on what i need to have. all the controls will be used.

i know about analog multiplexing, also digital multiplexing etc. but the one thing i was wondering is, how many controls both for analog and digital could i fit onto the duemilanove using multiplexing?.

this is just a question i need some rough estimate, as i dont want to get to the building stage and then it all wont go on.
some latency is not a problem, it will have it anyway with so many controls.

many thanks...

lewis edwards

smokingbunny.co.uk

i know about analog multiplexing, also digital multiplexing etc. but the one thing i was wondering is, how many controls both for analog and digital could i fit onto the duemilanove using multiplexing?.

By using external multiplexing and digital shift registers there is no real limit on the number of things you can control. Think of some of the blinking LED cubes that are 10x10x10, that's 1,000 leds that can be commanded on or off!

Your real limit is most likely to be the internal RAM memory used to store variable information.

Lefty

very true. thanks for the advice.
also, my own thoughts on what to do are my limits :slight_smile:

aye, this question just struck me when i reached over 100 controls in the designs. i had to stop myself and think about if this is possible :)...

Maybe it should be better to stark thinking in a better and bigger micro-controller.

You might consider connecting multiple microcontrollers together using I2C, SPI, or even serial.

That way you can maintain good response times.

Also ATmega's are pretty cheap if you can flash the program yourself.

GB