Project: Tron Dance Suits | Nrf24l01

[Jan_B]

Hi,

I need some help with this project. I will document the progress with photos here. Planned is a "Tron Dance". See here if you don't know this: YouTube

To reduce costs and to keep it simple, the suits will be fitted with EL Wire instead of LED Strips. There will be 4 "regions" on the suit (Head, upper body, legs, hands). The Arduino has enough pins, so it should be easy to control 4 drivers with Mosfets.

The suits are not a problem, I need help with the RF. One Arduino should act as a "Master TX".
XBee is too expensive, there will be 5 suits. There are wireless DMX pcb modules, but I cannot find much information about these.

So I chose the Nrf24l01 modules and ordered some of them.

The idea is, that the Master TX is the only one that sends information. The other 5 on the suits will be RX only.
As you can see on the video, there are sequences like: "Upper Body Suit 1" on for 0.5s, then "Legs suit 2" on for 300ms.
So I thought that the Master TX Arduino will send the commands to all RX Arduinos (same Channel and same address?). The RX Arduinos then decide if they are mentioned in the command.

How about the timing? If all suits should light up, it should happen synchronously. How about ACK? Any tips regarding the configuration of Nrf24l01 pcbs?

Thanks
Bests Jan

[Robin2]

Have a look at this Simple nRF24L01+ Tutorial. There is an example for the master sending to two slaves. It will be straightforward to extend that to a larger number of slaves.

...R

[Jan_B]

Thanks! I hope it will work with the PA+LNA modules since some users had problems with it.

I will try to learn with your tutorial. But do you think timing will be a problem? Did you ever experience a serious delay while sending/receiving data?

[Robin2]

The programming interface for the high-power nRF24s is identical to that for the low-power versions.

I have not noticed any serious delay. The round-trip time for a message and acknowledgement is about 1 or 2 millisecs IIRC.

...R