Easy/cheap way for wireless switching of multiple switches?

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
1

Hello,

I want to selectively switch a number (3-5) of remote switches (e.g., LEDs) from an Arduino or PC.
Ideally, I'd have a broadcast radio channel on a "server" arduino and the different clients would switch on/off given they received a matching ID.
I understand I can use Bluetooth or XBee plus an Arduino for eacg client. However, this is rather expensive and computational overkill.
Latency up to 100 ms is ok, bandwidth is obviously no issue here, the clients are distributed within 50m radius.

So three questions:

  1. I don't mind an Arduino as server but is there a way to get rid of the client side Arduinos?
  2. Which wireless system do you recommend?
    2a. If it is Bluetooth: AFAIK Bluetooth is connection-based - or is there also a way to broadcast/multicast? (Otherwise I'd have to open/send/close a connection to each client every time).

Thanks for any tip!
Mathias

2

I realised the almost same works with Tally for video camera.

My system use an broadcast arduino uno and 8 tally receivers.

I used with a good rande the NRF24 wireless breadboard from sparkfun. It's small, cheap and works well.

look at this to get more information : http://maniacbug.github.com/RF24/

Grag38