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This long winded intro brings me to the subject of this post: RS485.
This is a serial communications specification that uses differential signaling. The awesome thing about this is that it offers many cool things, one of which is improved noise immunity. As the wire contains the same signal twice (once normal, once inverted) When it gets to the other end, and the inverted signal is transformed into a non-inverted signal and combined with the original signal. Any electrical noise that was picked up is then cancelled out due to wave mechanics. Cool, huh?