Hi All! I'm building an interactive boardgame with a lot of sensors. I wonder if my setup would work as follow:
16 X A3144 Hall Effect Sensor each to a CD74HC4067 analog multiplexer; which 7 of these previous setup connects to a TCA9548A digital multiplexer. I'd have 4 of the digital multiplexers with all the branching out, totalling around 460 sensor connecting to a either uno or nano...
My question is: is it viable to connect them all TCA9548A's to I2C channels (A4 & A5) while setting them different address manually (just different combination of the A0,A1,A2 pins with GND&VCC), then on these multiplexers the SD-&SC input pairs would go to each CD74HC4067's S1-&S0 pins?
In theory it should work... I don't need great speed, if the controller can scan all sensors in every ~ 1-3 seconds would be sufficient.
I found cheap those multiplexers, and any other solution would be much more expensive. This way I can always track what was placed and removed from the game, where are the players at, and have audio-& visual interactive elements make it all more fun...
I've asked chatGPT also, I'm not convinced that it's not bull$#itting me, but in theory it should work, right?
Thanks for the brainstorm!
It is not clear what you want to do, or why you want to use multiplexers. Please try to explain your idea as clearly as possible, and post a block wiring diagram.
Even the Arduino Uno R3/Classic Nano/Pro Mini can handle 16 x Hall effect sensors, just using I/O pins.
I need to read roughly 460 sensors. This is not viable solution even if I use Megas to use straight the I/O pins (not even talking about their communication between them) and the power consumption. I wanted to branch out 4 digital multiplexers with their 7X4 inputs to 7 analog multiplexers with each channels... this is way smaller footprint than any other controllers and power consumption is also much better (I'll run it on 18650 Li-ion batteries)
Hi, @klevis_cazies
Can you tell us your projects basic game play?
There may be other ways to accomplish your aims.
Can you please post a basic block diagram of how you envisage all the multiplexers being arranged?
Can you please tell us your electronics, programming, arduino, hardware experience?
Thanks.. Tom.. 
Is there any way of configuring the 460 sensors as a matrix, say 20x23 and scan the matrix similar to scanning a keypad ? This may require only 46 pins in the best case.
Well, it's a monopoly-like board game... just adapting new rules and stuff... generally that's the base of the game... I considered the matrix idea, but I have to divide it up to 4 quadrants... for transport reason and storage... The quadrants are going to be connected by magnetic Pogo pin connectors for reliable connections. Also, I'm not sure how to attach a wiring diagram here, but the idea in the above sketched one is that it's not a lot of wires needs to be connected to the actual Arduino... the multiplexer on the test performed well, I only connected 1 digital and 2 analog one, but the addressing was fine, I could get back results as intended... I just wondered if the amount I'm about to hook up going to work, and not bottlenecking some communication or other area, which I overlooked... I've used ChatGPT for the code, and I have to admit, it's very helpful to write the bulk of the code...
YES!
You need to also consider the Arduino latency when working with that many sensors. Can it respond in the required time frame. Given enough time and appropriate hardware you can scan almost an unlimited number of sensors.
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