SparkFun Forums

[xz124]

Hello everyone,

I'm working on building a wireless quiz buzzer system, and I'm searching for a wireless solution. I effectively need to have 12 actual buzzers communicating with one master over some sort of RF link. The master only needs to communicate in "broadcast", as in, the packets it sends out need to be received by every buzzer. I've been looking at the nRF24L01-based boards, but it seems as though I either have to share addresses, or use NOACK to achieve what I'm looking for, as the chip is only able to have 6 parallel data pipes open. If I had every module have the same RX_0 address (set to the master's TX address), then a broadcast without ACK would be easy. Each module could then have a TX address set to the module's RX_0 address so that the master could receive players' buzzing in, again without ACK. My question is this: is the configuration I've just outlined feasible for what I'm trying to do, or is there a better way to do this? These modules would be housed in plastic boxes, and I'd prefer for there to be as few dropped packets as possible, as a single dropped packet can screw up the entire system.

Thanks!

[brennen]

That's quite feasible. You would want to have some type if ID in the data packet that the buzzer sends to the master so that the master could know which buzzer it was receiving a message from. Optimally, you would want to be on-air for as short a time as possible to try to minimize the likelihood of on-air collisions between buzzers, so you would want a very short data packet, as well as a 2 mbps data rate.