Any recommendations for RF transceiver...?

I want to make a little LED game for two players. The plan is to have two controller boxes with arcade buttons on the top along with a few LEDs for status/score, etc. (the buttons I'm looking at have LEDs in them as well...)

The game itself will be another gadget that goes in the center of the table. It needs to communicate with the controller boxes. I like the idea of doing it wirelessly (it's easier to transport, you can move the boxes around, kids can fight over them without breaking any wires, etc).

Plus it's way cooler and I can use the same controllers for other games in the future.

What would be a good/cheap way to do this?

  • Cost isn't critical. I'm only making two, $5-10 extra isn't a problem (especially if it saves me some time...)

  • The amount of data transmitted will be tiny and I don't imagine transmission distance will ever be a factor.

  • Latency needs to be low

  • The central game unit needs to be able to talk to two separate devices

  • I'd like to use something like an ATtiny84 in the controller boxes, in which case serial ports wouldn't be available. I guess I could use something with a USART in a pinch but I'd prefer SPI, I2C, etc.

PS: I thought of using Infra-red, too, but it's not as neat and the IR stuff I've seen so far actually seems more difficult/expensive than RF.

Update: I'm just reading up on nRF24L01+ based devices. They seem to do everything I want...!

(And are easy to get hold of on eBay, etc.)