Robin2:
I'm not sure that you mean by "extra strip" but there is no need for every master-slave group to use a different channel. Different addresses will probably be sufficient unless there is a very high update rate.I built 4 pairs of controllers for a model railway system and they all work quite happily on the same channel using different addresses for each pair. Each pair sends messages about 10 times per second. The system is designed to withstand occasional data collisions.
However, based on my current knowledge of nRF24s if I was building the system now I would just use one master to poll the 4 hand controllers. and that would avoid the collisions.
...R
So in fencing you'd have a strip that two fencers fence on. So for this project each strip would have a master box (showing the lights and telling the judge who hit who), and two slave boxes attached to each fencer that the master would pull for hit status.
If you have two strips (the line on which a fencer fences on) you'd have two separate master boxes indicating to two separate judges who touches and which ones are valid, all at the same time.
If you look at fencing nationals, you'll have well over 60 different strips each with different scoring systems. So when you have 60 strips all fencing at the same time (or maybe the boxes don't get turned off) and suddenly someone decides to turn on the 61st scoring system, then that can just sweep through the channels checking for traffic and picking a traffic free channel.
Or at least I think that is doable.
Actually, is this doable? Would it be too much strain on the nRF chips to constantly change channels and check for traffic?