Inter-Arduino IR Data Transfer

Projects General Guidance
1

I'm building a laser tag system, using the z3t0/Arduino-IRremote library.

So far I've managed to get 2 nanos to "fire" at each other, monitor life, shields, ammo count, and display all of it onscreen.

At the moment the IR signal sent is just junk (sendRaw()), and the receiving nano is set to react to any signal detection.

Now I could improve the system by using one of the vendor libraries, like sendNEC, and setting specific hex codes to send/receive.

What I would would like to do however, is send a packet of different values in one go.

Now, being a lowly PHP Developer by profession, what I would normally do is something like the below:

{
    player: 1,
    damage: 10,
    type: 3
}

While I know there are a couple of JSON libraries out there for arduino i feel like this would still be a very inefficient way to transfer such simple data. Something like below would be better:

[1, 10, 3]

But I lack the fundamental understanding of IR data structure to send these 3 set of data in one go. I've gone through a couple of tutorials on SparkFun and Adafruit but there seems to be something not quite clicking with me.

I have figured out how to send a single value, then another, then another, but this would really complicate the receiving code to have to receive the first signal then wait for the following 3, not to mention the chance of packet loss.

It would be amazing if some kind soul could show an example, or to highlight the reasons why it simply won't work. Thanks guys/girls!

2

To clarify, I have a rough understanding of how a signal is constructed with set period of HIGH and LOW, separated by specific sized gaps.

I just don't understand how example RAW code uses arrays like {9600, 560, 560, 9600}. What do the different values do? (i also have access to an oscilloscope)

3

Robin2 has a quite extensive tutorial on use of serial that should help.

4

Cheers for this - shall read it now :slight_smile:

5

Robin2 has a quite extensive tutorial on use of serial that should help.

@wildbill this is exactly what was needed. Instead of just posting some code you've instead helped me figure it out for myself, thank you!

Karma for you and Robin2 :smiley: