RF Transceiver Chips

[Larry Cates]

Hello,

Does anyone know, for an advanced amateur, the cheapest (but quality of
course) evaluation kit for very low cost RF Transceivers. I plan to
"sensor" my house so I need to base station and least 20 "remote" stations.

Thanks in advance for any responses,

Larry

 

[Phil Allison]

"Larry Cates"

Does anyone know, for an advanced amateur, the cheapest (but quality of
course) evaluation kit for very low cost RF Transceivers. I plan to
"sensor" my house so I need to base station and least 20 "remote"
stations.

** Kinda, slightly interesting to know if your " sensors " are simple
on/of switches or maybe hi-res colour video cameras.

Might affect whether you idea is doable or insane.




........ Phil

 

[[email protected]]

Hello,

Does anyone know, for an advanced amateur, the cheapest (but quality of
course) evaluation kit for very low cost RF Transceivers. I plan to
"sensor" my house so I need to base station and least 20 "remote" stations.

Thanks in advance for any responses,

Larry

What kind of data will you be sending over the air - a few bits,
serial data stream, video, etc.?
What is your definition of very low cost? There was a guy a few weeks
ago on comp.robotics.misc who wanted to control a stepper motor with
low cost. When someone suggested a $15 stepper motor controller, he
said thanks but it was too expensive for him. Oh, brother!

BRW

 

[Larry Cates]

Hi Guys,

Thanx.
I will be sensing just voltages so I will be transmitting/receiving one to
no more than 15 bits.
I hope to keep the average cost per station below $25 and the cost of the
whole mess below
$600.

Thanks again!
Larry

 

[Eeyore]

What kind of data will you be sending over the air - a few bits,
serial data stream, video, etc.?
What is your definition of very low cost? There was a guy a few weeks
ago on comp.robotics.misc who wanted to control a stepper motor with
low cost. When someone suggested a $15 stepper motor controller, he
said thanks but it was too expensive for him. Oh, brother!

Given that you could do it with a $2 microcontroller and some discretes I can see
his point.

Graham

 

[[email protected]]

Hello,

Does anyone know, for an advanced amateur, the cheapest (but quality of
course) evaluation kit for very low cost RF Transceivers. I plan to
"sensor" my house so I need to base station and least 20 "remote" stations.

Thanks in advance for any responses,

Larry

I am also doing something similar and I don't want to deal with
discretes, so I ended up opting for Maxstream Xbee modules. They are
cheap ($19) and they are high quality. They work on the Zigbee
standard and mesh networking is possible.

-Bertan