Arduino to Arduino rf link communication, HELP!

Projects General Guidance
1

I am working on a remote control project using two arduino Uno boards communicating through seedstudio RF 315mhz link. One Uno board will TX the state of two pushbuttons (up or down) to a RX Uno board with a seedstudio relay shield. I am learning as I go but I am stuck on how to send a command from one board to be performed on another in my sketch.
Figuring out the code for the RF LINK will be my next step.....

This is my code so far, I wrote this so one arduino reads the state of the pushbuttons and triggers the connected relays on the shield. Now I need help to edit the code so one Arduino sends the pushbutton command to another arduino with a relay shield.

int pbIn1 =12; //pushbutton 1
int pbIn2 =13; //pushbutton 2
int relay5 =7; //relay on shield
int relay4 =6; //relay on shield
int button1=0;
int button2=0;

void setup(){
Serial.begin(9600);

pinMode(pbIn1, INPUT);
pinMode(pbIn2, INPUT);
pinMode(relay4, OUTPUT);
pinMode(relay5, OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
button1 = digitalRead(pbIn1);
if
(button1 == LOW)

{digitalWrite (relay4, LOW);}

else
{
digitalWrite(relay4,HIGH);}

button2 = digitalRead(pbIn2);
if
(button2 == LOW)

{digitalWrite(relay5, LOW);}

else
{
digitalWrite(relay5,HIGH);}
{Serial. println(); } } // not sure what to input here to relay digital read status of pbIn1,pbIn2?

2

RF link - check out virtualwire, it does this wonderfully. I have a remote that starts/stops time, modifies score, sets some lights, etc on the receiver.

3

CrossRoads, any chance you could help me implement the VirtualWire commands into my code? Or maybe point me in the right direction as in the correct syntax or code structure for my simple two pushbutton project? I have the arduinos communicating with the VW sample code now but I am having trouble writing it into my own code. Any help would be great!

Thank you!

I'll take advise from anyone!

4

What I did was write a big loop that checks for several things each pass thru, one of the being data received via virtual wire.
You can do this blink-without-delay style timing, such that the loop checks each feature you have running on 10mS intervals or something too.

On the send side, you need to load up the array named 'msg' with your data, then use vw_send, etc to send it out.
I only put 1 character that I read from a key press, your data will be 2 bytes? Then:
msg[0] = databyte1;
msg[1] = databyte2;

need to declare how many bytes long msg is earlier:
array msg[2]; // 2 byte array, data is at msg[0] and msg[1]

My code

    // go read the keypad
  char key = keypad.getKey();                 // reading the keypad
  if(key)                                     // same as if(key != NO_KEY)- did something change?
  {
    msg[0]=key;                               // load the array with the key character
    // msg[1]=NULL;                           // Rx side seems to work without this as only sending 1 byte
    digitalWrite(ledPin, true);               // Flash a light to show transmitting
    vw_send((uint8_t *)msg, strlen(msg));     // send the character out
//    Serial.println(key);                // for debugging only
    vw_wait_tx();                             // Wait until the whole message is gone
    delay (50);                               // need some delay or seem to miss key presses
    digitalWrite(ledPin, false);              // turn off the flash of LED
  }