Simple Digital Wireless transceiver IC?

[Jdo300]

Hello All,

I'm wondering if there is a very simple (and cheap) method to transmit data from the board with my microcontroller on it to another board? I was looking around ant patallax has a nice transmitter/receiver pair for about $30 that you can buy here:

http://www.parallax.com/html_pages/products/communication/rf_modules.asp

They are very nice but also pretty pricey. I did find what I thought would be the ultimate, cheap solution here:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=7813

Does anyone know of any other similar setups in a small one-chip solution that can both transmit and receive data from another identical chip? I'm not concerned about the speed of the data transfer since I would be controlling it with a BASIC Stamp and the range can be around 50ft or less. The only reason I'm not going with the above chip is because the receiver board is rather large (my circuit has to fit on a 2" by 2" board).

Thanks,
Jason O

 

[Jdo300]

Ok, I just did some more looking around on that last website I posted the link to and it looks like they do have a rather nice one-chip RF transmitter receiver setup. But before I look into getting that one, I should probably tell you more about my requirements. I basically want to communicate with my BASIC Stamp microcontroller through the serial port of a PC but I don't want to run a serial cable directly to the board. So... ideally, I'm looking for a nice, low-cost kit out there that has a board with the transceiver and a serial port on it (that I don't need to program unlike the one on the above link), and another transceiver that I can plug into my Stamp through some headers or something. What do you all think?

Thanks,
Jason O

 

[berkeman]

Cypress has their Wireless USB (WUSB) chipset -- not sure if they have low-cost demo boards available or not.

You might be able to use an inexpensive wireless keyboard thing -- I think the simplest have a dongle that you plug into your USB port to communicate with the keyboard. That might just be a 1-way link, though.

Could you use IR instead, and rig something up with IR remote control parts?

 

[Jdo300]

HI Berkeman,

Thats definitely a possibility. But I'm not completely sure if I will always have a direct line of sight to communicate with the board or not. You can't do IR communications with obstructions in the way right?

Thanks,
Jason O