Hi there guys,
My name’s Steve, I’m 32 and looking at getting into electronics as an offshoot of my main hobby, which is airsoft (ie bb guns). One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is to build several types of pyrotechnic device (using compressed gas, not actual explosives!) for use at my local site, all controlled from a central hand-held unit, but with feedback from the devices telling the control unit what their status is - eg on/off, disarmed, armed, and detonated. I also plan to build a “satchel charge” with a built in timer which can be set either on the box itself via a keypad, or from the control unit. The satchel charge will have the option of being disarmed by a code entered on the keypad or remotely from the control unit. I’ve come up with a few ideas but need to find out if I’m heading in the right direction! 
Firstly I was looking at a Basic Micro Nano 28 or 40 (depending how many I/O pins it needs as it will have various buttons and an LCD screen) processor for the central control unit, and Nano 18’s for the simple pyros and the satchel charge (or maybe a Nano 28 if it needs more I/O pins for the keypad and LCD screen). I have some experience of programming in Basic, many years ago, but looking at the list of commands the Basic Micro processors use, it looks relatively simple. I have a question regarding these processors, if I wanted to operate a servo using the processor to give a signal input to the servo, could this be done by conneting the servo’s signal cable to one of the I/O pins, and the positive and ground from the servo connected to the battery, or would I need a dedicated servo driver board?
Next I was looking for some way of getting the devices to communicate with the control unit. I was originally looking at 2.4GHz R/C gear from the local model shop but this does not have any way of the devices communicating back to the controller. I then came across the WRL-00560 433MHz UM12 long range modem on this site, which sounds ideal as it has reasonably long range and can transmit and recieve data simultaneously. My plan is to incorporate into the software some sort of ID number for each device, so the transmitter sends out signals which all the devices pick up but each device will only respond to instructions directed at it by first recognising it’s ID number. In a similar way, the devices will send back their status information to the control unit with their ID number, so the control unit can keep track of what each device is doing. That is more of a programming issue than a hardware issue though, I just wanted to know if the modem I’m looking at is suitable or if there is a better option available.
So in summary, I just wanted to know if any of you guys had any thoughts on this project and if I’m going the right way about it and chosen the right components? As I say I’m an almost complete amateur when it comes to electronics, I can wire up simple stuff like motors and switches and regulators etc so I’m not a complete numpty when it comes to sticing wires together, and as I said I did some Basic programming years back, so hopefully the two will come together and everything should work.
Thanks in advance for your feeback,
-Steve