After much forum-browsing I think I now have the basic outline of how to work my 1st "major" Arduino project. Haven't seen anything close to this so any input is welcome.
I want to control a model containing 10 motors and some other circuits via a radio link. Transmitter involves an Arduino with a lot of buttons, each connected to a different input. The sketch I need to write will make the Arduino output a different frequency on one pin for each input which "sees" a button pressed. BUT!... I want to be able to press more than one button at a time. :-? I'm thinking Time Division Multiplexing.
I understand how TDM works, but could only find one reference to it in this forum (controlling LEDs). What do I need to fit it into my sketch?
The TDM pulse train would be sent via a 433Mhz link, to be decoded after the receiver by another Arduino using one input pin, with the sketch written to switch on the outputs corresponding to the buttons that are pressed. I see a time delay reqd to hold each output ON long enough to allow for the TDM.
This is as far as I got so far. Does all of this look doable?
There are a number of ways you could encode the data, you could send two binary words indicating the state of up to 16 pins. Or you could encode the states as hex values, using three bytes for up to 12 pin states or four bytes for 16 states.
Thanks, mem; that tutorial does address the problem of noise that I had just started thinking about.
I can't follow much of that code yet. Will that method still let me press 2 or more buttons at once to activate 2 or more ccts at the receive end?
That link is probably more helpful for wiring than for code suggestions. A good google search should turn up lots of ideas for software integration of those devices to an arduino.
How best to implement your application depends on a number of factors. I suggest you look to see if you can re-use some of the existing protocols for communicating the state of the arduino pins, such as fermata: Arduino Playground - Firmata