Hi, thanks for the fast reply!
DVDdoug:
I don't think so.You could change the crystal, but the complier would be expecting 16MHz and that would mess-up any timing in your firmware. (i.e. delay(1000) would delay for 2 seconds.) I don't if there's a compiler option for an 8MHz device (that would solve the timing issue), but there would probably be something else device-specific that would get messed-up if you use the wrong compiler-option.
I think that's easily solved with adding a new entry to the boards.txt file.
I did that (by copying the original Uno entry) and changed the line for the clock speed from 16000000 to 8000000.
Now the compiler's reference is 8MHz and every clock speed related timing is properly being messed up. ]
(including the speed of the serial port, which I wasn't prepared for, to be honest - why is that, BTW? The UART uses the same clock?)
For the actual hardware (a remote controller)
Processor speed shouldn't be an issue in that application.
no it shouldn't, but the code is growing fast.
OTOH I'm learning, so it's some basic curiosity as well.