My problem is that I am building a remote weather station, which will be stationed up on my roof once it's completed. I've chosen to connect it to my computer through the serial port (RS-232), mainly for financial reasons and simplicity. I always figured that once I got it working with the serial port, I could worry about making it lightning-proof later.
I've already purchased the microcontroller board (which is serial port only!), but I haven't started building the system yet.
So now my options are, I suppose:
1) Buy a new microcontroller board that has Ethernet, then connect it to a wireless transceiver which will then connect to my wireless home network (expensive).2) Create an RS-232 to fiber optic link, have 2 transceivers at either end of a long fiber cable which convert the signal back to serial (time consuming).
3) Buy an off-the-shelf serial-to-wireless system (very expensive).Ideally I don't want to have to do any of these things. What if I simply grounded the weather station, would that work? I don't care about the weather station getting damaged from a lightning bolt, I just want my computer and home to be safe...
Any thoughts, ideas?