Uno talks to nano
Since Air Manager doesn’t support I2C displays from script, I need to create a small sketch (so not ‘native’ Air Manager script) to get information from Air Manager on a display. I’m using a Arduino Nano for that. My instrument (which will not have a display), will be driven by a native script, that talks to the Nano with the display. Takes me two Arduino’s to accomplish this, but that’s fine. The Nano is cheap enough to do that.
Unfortunately Air Manager doesn’t support I2C devices, but has implemented a ‘communication protocol’ to have devices talk to each other. The documentation is, well, not once you understand the principles, it’s easy to implement.
Tonight I created the proof of concept shown in the video, to see if I could use this set up for my radio panel. It does, and now I have even more ports to play with. From the previous experiments I have some nice classes for the Arduino, which now come handy.
I also decided to set up a more permanent testing board using a prototyping shield. It has a fixed button, two leds and I added a rotary encoder. It has its own display, which I am not using for this experiment obviously, but which comes handy to display debug information.
I’m really getting the hang of this stuff. Also very glad I decided to choose for Air Manager. Saves me a lot of time, well worth the 60 euros.