I'm very new to Arduino and electronics in general, but I've been programming for a long time. I've gone through the projects book with my Uno and I'm ready to try something more complex. My garage door opener is missing a second transmitter, and I thought this could be something fun to try, so I've been looking at my options. One of my constraints is that I'd like to use parts that I have on hand, one of which is an RPi with usb/ethernet ports that don't work.
Here are the general steps currently in my mind:
- I want to use an optocoupler to wire up the RPi to the button that operates the door opener
- The transmitter in my car will be my Arduino Uno, powered by some batteries
- I want to use a pair of nRF24L01+ transceivers for the wireless communication between the two devices, and I'm planning on writing some code using a psk or something to secure the communication (haven't fully worked through this yet)
My question:
One of the design goals I have is to be able to power the Arduino transmitter for a good long time on batteries. I don't know how to work out the power requirements for this to function the way I want. I'd like to figure it out for myself if someone can point me in the right direction. I know I'll need to use some kind of sleep mode on the Uno and use interrupts to wake it, but that's about all I know. Is what I'm thinking of doing feasible?