Parallel -> Serial circuit

There's a lot of helpful hardware-types around here, hopefully one of you can help me out. This seems like it should be pretty simple, but unfortunately I know just enough about hardware to be dangerous.

I'm trying to add a remote control (and display.. some details in this thread) to my Empeg via serial with a neat combination joystick/optical encoder/pushbutton. I'm at the point where I've got the 7 different pins at TTL-level for each of the seven different actions.

Now, how do I get those 8 (let's just assume there's 8 to make things nice and powers of 2) parallel bits and stuff them down the serial line so they can be read by software on the Empeg? In other words, what's the big box in the middle here?



(sorry, couldn't resist the underpants gnome thing)

I'd use a PIC/AVR chip to do it as you're going to want to convert it into RS232 to make it easier to read.

- Trevor

Sounds like you're just trying to do a variaton on a wired steering wheel remote interface. Heck, you could even do it with an infrared repeater if you wanted. Anyway, that link's got a link to John Lambon's instructions for building the magic circuit you describe. Or, if you 've got a tuner module, it's even easier because it's just a resistor network.