Hi. I made some circuits a while ago that take commands from a PC through serial. The circuits could also send out serial to each other. Since then ive been told i really shouldnt be using the method i was using and i have to put a MAX232 chip (or similar) between the PICs and the PC.

I have 3 wires. DataIn, DataOut and Common. When the PC is sending the commands this isnt a problem. PC > MAX232 > PIC. I know how to do that much. The problem comes when the PC isnt around and one of the PICs wants to send commands. How do i go about doing that?

Before i simply used the seriout command on the same pin that usually used serin. This time i will be using hardware UART so i can do PWM and a MAX232 chip. Both of those things stop me from sending data out of the DataIn wire.

I had a thought. Can i use a seperate pin on the PICs so when its set as the master it uses serout on some other random pin which makes use of the second output of MAX232. Connect the output of the MAX232 into the input (the DataIn wire). The master chip will ignore itself and the others will listen.

Is this possible? Is it the best way? Will it work without something exploding? lol