I (think) have had a EUREKA moment! Look, my problem in a nutshell is that I cannot get serin data thru to my pic while hard interrupts are firing at 50hz. This means I can't get the data thru to tell my dish to stop. And I cannot prioritize the serial data over the interrupts because it'll miss pulses and get lost. Hserin/Hserout seems much better but I cannot get hserin to respond, except from another pic. I did not, however, have this problem when it was all in one piece and I was sending button presses as commands instead of data streams. Even with fast interrupts going, it'll still realize a pin has gone high, and respond accordingly. So... since I was going to add a low-end pic like 628A to sit around and wait for serin commands and send out hserout commands to the main pic anyway, I'm just going to have it send simulated button presses instead. I'll run the TX from the BT to the 628A, and it'll sit around waiting for serial data from the handheld in a serin command, and I'll run the RX from the BT straight to the 1829, so that the handheld can receive responses and confirmations via hserout commands. Then I'll program the 1829 just as if I had physical buttons hooked up to control it, but it will in fact be the 628A "pressing the buttons". Since my handheld device only has 4 buttons on it anyway, it'll even be fairly easy to program and keep it straight in my head because the 1st pic is simply going to receive "A" "B" "C" or "D" (via serin) from the pic in the handheld (probably another 628A) and forward a "button press" to the 1829. Since the 628A will have no other task in life, it should be ultra-reliable.


Any input on this idea?

So far I think this'll be my best bet to get the "walking" and "gum chewing" without the "crashing into S***".....