Optical sensor: which controller to use?

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi all,

Completely new to Arduino so please excuse my ignorance. I was wondering whether someone would mind commenting on the best controller to use given the following requirements:

I'm wanting to build a portable (battery operated) optical sensor. The requirements are:

16 bit ADC
narrow form factor (ie 2.1")
onboard data storage (ie CompactFlash or SD)
ability to drive a LED during measurement
ability to drive a motor to control a shutter
ability to read data off the storage via UART or ethernet

The device will take measurements a few times each hour, and then store the data to the card. For most of the time, it will be doing nothing, so there is also a need to operate in a standby/low power mode when not in operation.

I understand that most (all?) of the Arduino boards host 10 bit ADCs, so adding a high resolution ADC via a SPI interface is probably the way to go.

Can a SD card reader be hosted off the same SPI pins? Or would I need a controller with multiple sets of SPI pins?

Any suggestions welcome! Thanks in advance!

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16 bit ADC
narrow form factor (ie 2.1")
onboard data storage (ie CompactFlash or SD)
ability to drive a LED during measurement
ability to drive a motor to control a shutter
ability to read data off the storage via UART or ethernet

Arduino -
12 bit ADC
Namao board very small
small amount of EEPROM SD requires a shield plugin
40mA per output pin pleant for LED
You would need a transistor or motor shield for the motor
USB connection and hardware UART
Ethernet shield available

Shields can be stacked, but probably not all of the ones I mentioned above at the same time :wink: