A few reasons:

- Programming on the empeg itself is something I never ended up doing, so I don't even have the necessary compilers and toolchains installed, and now with Riocar,org down, there's not a lot of online help documentation for learning that anew. I know I could bug y'all here on the forum, but it'd be pretty slow going.

- I am comfortable with Arduino programming, having done some of it before, and the tools and online support is strong. I could get things done much more quickly that way.

- I like the idea that I might be able to make a module that is entirely external to the empeg and just plugs in. At that point, I could put it all together in a kit for anyone who wants to do the same thing.

In the end I might find my current method too limited and have to go the on-the-empeg route later anyway.