Basically what the title says. I want to build a pinball machine, and I think I need around 100 leds, 10-20 motors and proximity sensors. Is there and Arduino which can deal with these?
Probably 2 or 3 Megas would do it.
There are port expanders that can vastly increase the number of pins available. Then your limitations are speed and memory. You might consider one of the top end of the Teensy range if a Mega isn't enough.
Two MAX7219 will control 128 LEDs from 3 IO pins.
Mega has 70 IO. A fully broken out Atmega2560 will provide 86 IO.
of motors will depend on the motor. Are they controllable from just 2 or 3 pins? Direction, speed, enable?
How many proximity sensors?
You are asking if you can write efficient software, the hardware is available to do it with the Arduino. You might consider a Raspberry Pi 4. Try this link: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/e-ale-rt-apps_John-Ogness.pdf, it is a start and will help you work out your solution(s). While you are reading this you should also start a schematic so you have a better understanding of what you really need. The Pi is an overkill but there are too many unknowns. KiCad for schematic capture is available for downloading and will operate on the Mac, PC and of course Linux. Best part it is free!
CrossRoads:
of motors will depend on the motor. Are they controllable from just 2 or 3 pins? Direction, speed, enable?
I'm a noob and I'm not sure what type of motor should I use. I want to use them for very small but fast movements like the pinball kickers or or to reset various elements of the table.
csongi0:
Basically what the title says. I want to build a pinball machine, and I think I need around 100 leds, 10-20 motors and proximity sensors. Is there and Arduino which can deal with these?
If the speed requirements aren't demanding, maybe upto 1000's using I/O expanders. I/O expansion
trades speed for quantity of signals.
Eventually the of size RAM may prove to be a restriction with lots of I/O to model.
If you are doing a lot of fast switching, the processor speed may become the limiting factor.
Some LED types can be daisy-chained and share a single control line.
I suspect the way to go is finding some I2C controlled multiple motor/servo controllers for motors
and selenoids and servos, do the inputs as direct inputs for quick scanning, and keep the architecture
agnostic of which microcontroller, in case you need to upgrade (say from a Mega to something faster).
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