Afternoon folks,
I'm building a control panel at the moment which consists of standard tiles (40x40mm) arranged in a grid pattern behind a wood facia. The tiles are simply custom PCBs with the various LEDs, buttons and/or displays mounted on them.
My question is this: What would be the best way to connect them all to a "main" control microcontroller? Ideally, I'd be able to remove these tiles if I ever needed to, so I don't want to permanently attach anything... In addition, how would I be able to communicate with all the various LEDs, displays and buttons? ideally, obviously, I'd have a microcontroller connected to a data bus on each tile, but that would get very expensive very quickly... Perhaps only use the microcontroller idea for the input devices, and use addressable LEDs elsewhere...?
So far I've had two ideas, but I'm not sure if they're the best ideas - either using short ribbon cables between the boards, or board edge headers...
Sorry for the rambling post, but I'm a little stuck here :-(