I rigged up a breadboard circuit to test the microcontroller code and the terminal software as well. It's ugly, but it permits two-way communications between the laptop and the Arduino. Moreover, it lets me see that it's getting the right physical signals, by lighting up LEDs for the left/right/up/down and trigger commands, and including a button for resetting the ammo count after reloading.
On a related note, interrupt handlers are evil. One of them I won't be able to test properly until I have the actual rig assembled; the "did I fire?" jam check is done with a photodiode interrupt circuit. It's pretty time-sensitive the way the code is written, so it'll have to wait until the machine is more or less rigged up to test that routine properly. Jam detection is just a nice thing to have right now, anyway, not a critical issue.
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