Will the Arduino be something for my project ?

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi folks!

Im an analog guy…Very analog! This digital stuff is very new to me. However Im thinking of buying an Arduino for the project I am working on.

Im building an eight channel tube microphone preamplifier, with analog outs and its getting rather expensive about 250USD per channel so I want to cut the costs AND going remote (skipping pots and meters) since Im often in a recording position 40-100meters away from the microphones, I guess Im limited to the LAN shield using a cat5 or cat6 cable for the control!?

Also will the I/O connections be enough to Control all of this with total recall (presets)

1 Power the unit on/off relay.
8 micro controllers for the microphone gain(haven't bought those yet but something like the PGA2310!?)
8 Individual Phantom power relays
8 Individual -20 dB Pad relays

Is it doable ?

2

Re:

40-100meters away

Depending on electrical interference you may be able to do this using a 433Mhz FM TX/RX module
Otherwise, yes you could use LAN and run a mini web server on the board
Or possibly use Wifi

1 Power the unit on/off relay.

8 Individual Phantom power relays
8 Individual -20 dB Pad relays

Relays are easy to control from the Arduino, there are plenty of 8channel relay modules on eBay e.g.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5V-Eight-8-Channel-Relay-Module-With-optocoupler-For-PIC-AVR-DSP-ARM-Arduino-/310574415181?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item484fad7d4d

These are normally 10A mains rated relays.

I'm not sure if they are what you need or if the relays you mention are special.

Driving 16 relays plus other 8 other lines, etc you'll need to go for a bigger Arduino eg. Mega 2560

e.g.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mega-2560-ATmega2560-16AU-Board-Arduino-compatible-Free-USB-Cable-Funduino-/271524377371?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f381d331b

8 micro controllers for the microphone gain(haven't bought those yet but something like the PGA2310!?)

Looking at the data sheet for these http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pga2310.pdf It looks like the are an SPI device.

So you'd just need to wire the SCLK, SDO and SDI for each in parallel and feed the (CS) line for each one from a different O/P pin on the Mega 2560, so that you can control them independently.

So.. Overall, Yes, it seems do-able.