JGL,
It looks like circuit design and philosophy have crossed paths here and has taken us a bit off topic. I'm pretty new to this forum and I know that you've been around here for a while. I know that what I've read of yours has always been geared to help out as best you can. And I know that you have also been a proponent of making use of microprocessors as a tool to help solve problems. In that way, I think we are on the same side of this discussion. It would be wrong for us to not recommend the most appropriate tool to do the job. It's pretty tough when you recommend an idea that gets shut down for being too advanced, especially when you know that it's the right answer. But that's the nature of where we are and what we can expect. So from your experience I trust in your judgement to carry on with this particular project with the target audience being the curious but not so willing to look under the hood. I am confident that you can do this.
I was looking into SD card readers and trying to find out how Arduino binary programs could be uploaded without having to use the IDE. While the SD cards would be a good way to transfer readable program parameters, the bootloader issue is unsettled. There's a whole lot on the net about doing this very thing but it is dated and there doesn't seem to be a concensus of what to use. I'll continue to try to figure that out, at least for myself. If anyone has any ideas about this, please step forward. It would be great to be able to load program changes without having to move things around to do it.
I can't help with the Wifi idea. I'm one of the uninitiated about how that works. But it's an interesting idea nonetheless.
