SparkFun Forums

[abrogado]

Hi - I am a complete newcomer to everything. All I have is an idea, and some basic trust in myself to be a good and devoted experimenter once I get some basic info.

I believe what I'm trying to do might be simple, but unsure where to start.

Here's my desired outcome for my first version. 30 wristbands with a radio receiver and buzzer sewn into them tied to one or two remotes that when the remote button is pressed, the buzzer in every wristband vibrates. The necessary distance is around the size of two football fields, so maybe it can be on some kind of local shortwave radio? I'd eventually love to do a bluetooth version maybe with a little speaker to communicate via voice or something, but for now a simple buzzer.

Was hoping someone could point me in a direction as far as what to buy, or research.

Thanks!

AB

[JamesL]

The radio receiver/transmitter is probably the easiest and cheapest for getting started.

Sparkfun has these listed in their wireless section,
A receiver: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10532
And transmitter: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10534

Other than that I haven't worked much with any R/F stuff. But it certainly can't hurt to read through those product manuals, and search for some tutorials.

[Hengy]

Being a "complete newcomer to everything", the RF solution mentioned by Jamest would be hard to get started with.

Something like this transceiver https://www.sparkfun.com/products/152 would be smaller, and takes care of all the complexities of noise reduction, signal gain, encoding scheme, etc. I know other places have similar versions that may be smaller, as well as with external antenna connections. Maybe the antenna could be sewn into a shirt to improve range? A chip antenna will not give you two football fields.

Downside to using the linked transceiver is it requires a microcontroller. There are some that are 8 pin and small - attiny perhaps.

Good luck.

[Mee_n_Mac]

A good read.
https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/48