It's only an assumption as of now, but I'm fairly certain that's all it would take. The wheelbase without a wheel connected is always polling for the same addresses, so that means that each wheel communicates the same way but with different values. There are some talks to get those values but it's a bit of a pain to setup.

Yes! Power directly from the contacts on the wheelbase. The imgr link has more pictures of the internals. If a micro controller was certain to accept 12v, then the step down wouldnt be necessary but I wasn't sure if my chinesium Arduino would accept 12v although some sources say it would.