Wireless communication between many arduino

#1

Have a project that involves around 80 arduino-based puzzles and I’d like them to talk to one central control board - not sending much data, just status updates back and forth, so only a couple of bytes every few seconds per puzzle.

What’s the best way to do this? I have looked at NRF24L01 but was interested to know if anyone’s done anything similar/what you would try/other options. Distance is probably 10-20 metres across a large room at worst. Mainly looking for something with decent reliability, have never had great results with ESP32.

Thanks!

#2

@Howard

Howard knows this kind of stuff. Likely a really good resource to tap.

#3

Does it have to be an Arduino board or can it be an ESP ?
The ESPs do a Mesh Network that sounds like it may work…

Courty

#4

If the space you have is fixed then Wi-Fi devices using MQTT or OSC protocols.

If the space is mobile or needs to be quick to setup then Xbee with a custom protocol.

I could aim for the MQTT or OSC options over Wi-Fi though, that way you can easily debug data, create dummy devices with Node or Python scripts that emulate the hardware device for testing.

#5

@Calum_Nicoll Check out this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yninmUrl4C0
The guys in the video uses that ESP mesh network to control some lights in a room, the master circuit sends some audio info to the other lights.

#6

Have a look at the xbee /zigbee protocol, it support mesh