I set up my very first circuit board, and I bought quite a powerful magnet with 520 KG pulling force. It only activates my Reed switch a few CM further away than a much less powerful magnet I bought with 78 KG pulling force.
How do I get this to activate at a much further distance?
Or if this is not possible, then what long-distance switches would you recommend? Such as maybe, infrared, but with infrared, how would I make sure that it is on my specific frequency and not interfering with other infrared signals in the area. Same question but with ultrasound, or some other signal switch system?
I am not actually using an Arduino to control this, or any CPU, so if possible, this switch should work fully independently of any CPU or code that I would have to write. If not, I would at least be willing to learn the code, but I’ll save that for another thread.
So you have a battery powered remotely controlled vibrator (trying to suppress a smile here...) and you need to figure out the method of remotely controlling it?
Can you describe the two different functions of what you need to switch?
For example, arduino A is 10 feet away from arduino B. Arduino B needs to send a signal to A.
We need more details to assist! If you're trying to get a signal over a distance further than a few mm, a magnet isn't the best route.
IR, nrf24l01 wireless, wifi, etc are capable of longer distance communication. Once we get a better understanding of your project / system as a whole, we can offer greater assistance
No chance with a reed switch. The magnetic field drops of with the cube of the distance. Once you get out to a few meters then the Earth’s magnetic field will swamp any effect from a large magnet and it will be difficult to detect at all.
Magnets are dipoles, dipole fields fall off with the cube of distance, so you may be expecting too much of a magnet. No way will you get multiple metres - a magnet that big and powerful would be lethal to anyone with a pacemaker or similar, we talking MRI scanner magnet dimensions to achieve this.
You can use a more sensitive sensor like an electronics compass, this will extend the range considerable, but the basic 1/r^3 law will always be working against you.
The reason we can detect the Earth's magnetic field is that its generated by the core which is 1000's of km across.
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