Next Question: 433Mhz type tx/rx?

[kresty]

I forgot about this thread Yea, I was looking at it for relaying to an Arduino, but since them I've learned a bit about XBee's. I'll probably end up doing a nunchuck-ish (3d Printed) XBee controller when I get around to it. Also played with getting PCB's made at OshPark, so I'll may get something kinda small.

Initially I was thinking that the 12 button controllers "everyone" uses for Artoo sounds are just weird because we end up sticking them to an MP3 Trigger, one relay to one trigger input. Worse, the relays are overkill, the trigger needs almost no power on those lines, so transistors would be fine. I actually found one that the RX had a bunch of small transistor outputs (it's in Lara's mouse) - way smaller.

But that had made me thing that the whole process is silly. Especially for my droids because I'm merely using the MP3 trigger to decode the inputs and tell the Arduino what was pressed serially, then the Arduino tells it back what to play (or can do other stuff).

So the path for the signals is crazy on the RX side. You get an input into the RX Relay board, which then has a decoder chip that tries to figure out what the signal meant and drive the appropriate lines, sometimes depending on the appropriate behavior (latching, etc). And then those drive relays. Which go to inputs on the MP3 trigger, which then turns them back into serial info for the Arduino.

When I posted this I was just thinking about 4 of those steps were stupendously redundant, so if I "knew" how it worked I could just attach to the original data signal and skip some steps....

... but as I said, now I'm looking more at XBee, and complete solutions for both motion and sound, not just the 12 button remote.