Electronic – How to convert analog output from sensors to digital without microcontroller

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Okay, I want to make this clear – I am from computer science background, and would require more explanation than an average electrical guy.

The scenario, I have piezoelectric and LDR sensors, which give analog output of course. I plan to transmit the output from this using a serial 434Mhz RF Module, which will be received by a Raspberry Pi on the receiver side and processed further. Now, I am using HT12E encoder to encode 4 lines of parallel data, which according to my knowledge is 4 digital inputs, each of which I plan to use for 4 different sensors. I have setup the transmission part, and got the RF working.

The question, can I convert the output from the sensors to digital output, without using a micro controller, and send it to HT12E to encode, if so, how can I achieve this? If I have to use a micro controller, what would you recommend, Arduino or RPi, portability is important for me, and as far as I know, RPi doesn't have inbuilt ADC and is much bigger? Ideally, I would like to use the first method without micro controller mainly for portability and power consumption reasons. Please ask me about anything if I haven't been clear.

Best Answer

You want to use a microcontroller. Microcontrollers can be tiny integrated circuits. This is the right approach.

Arduino and Raspberry Pi's are not microcontrollers. The Raspberry Pi is a single board computer, and the Arduino is a microcontroller development board, associated with a "wiring" development environment.