Hi Simon,
hope you can help, I'm very new to arduino, so sorry in advance for the stupid questions.
What I'm trying to do is have a central arduino with LCD display, which is taking readings of two analogue readings (local battery voltage and 5v input) from each of 4 remote arduino's. This is simple (ish) enough for me to just about manage. However I also want to be able to turn off the remote arduino's when they are not communicating with the central arduino.
My plan is to use a P-FET or latching relay to turn off the arduino's and I'd start them with soft power button.
I'm not sure which way is best to control the power on the remote arduino's, I thought of two options:
Option 1:
Send a signal from the central arduino to keep the remotes on every 30 seconds, this would reset a counter on the remote arduino, if no on signal was received for 5 mins then the remote arduino would start shutdown process.
Option 2:
(I'm not sure if this is even possible)
Each remote arduino would send data to central, if it was unable to get a response from central arduino it would start shutdown process.
Each option would require some sort of bi-directional comms. Do you have any thoughts / opinions on the best way forward.
I'd be very very great full if you could help at all. RF comms is all very new to me.
Thanks
Jim