Re: Erik,

Sounds good to me. What sort of data rates are you looking at?.. Most RS-485 chips will give you a max data rate of at least 500kbps, although in practical terms, distance plays a big part so you may only get half of this.

One option, although probably a bit too involved is some sort of ethenet system. Depends on the exact application really.

As far as cable is concerned, and especially if you are using RS-485, you will need twisted-pair cable. If you use CAT5 cable or something similar with more than one set of twisted-pair, you could implement I2C with RS-485 drivers to get both an extreamly high data-rate due to the syncronous nature (higher than asyncronous anyway) of I2C and noise/error immunity provided by the balanced RS-485 drivers.. and it's nice and easy to implement!

Using CAT5 cable gives you several sets of twisted pairs. So after using two up for CLK and DATA, you have some others left which could be used as extra DATA lines (increasing data rate), or develop some sort of data collision detection, doing away with a master uC all together!

Matt.