We need to start looking further afield! Now that we know other devices are controllable, we need to know what control we can implement.... Years ago I had the opportunity to program CNC machinery.... These machines made use of the RS232 connection. Serial communication takes on many guises... SPI, I2C, RS485, CANBUS, ONEWIRE and RS232 to name a couple..
The first to get our heads round is the RS232... One of the simplest ways to connect to a PC.. The basic circuit that was first built will do...