Hi,
I've searched the boards and can't find anything on if I'd be able to intergrate a RF remote into my Arduino's capibilities. Basically I want to load my light pattern schetch and place the board on my motorcycle and with each press of the button of the remote (basically a car's key fob) have the next LED lighting pattern active, press it again the next pattern activates and so on. I've seen videos of other members doing different light patterns with each press of a hard wired button, but never with a remote. I've tried to research on how to make a RF transmitter and reciever that might possibly work and the easiest thing I can find really is for a garage door opener using DIP switches that allows 256 combinations. Problem with this is I can't find any how to's or examples of how to make one, only them trying to sell me one and I'm not even sure if it'd work for my application. Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated....thanks.
I would look into the Xbee wireless boards (Sparkfun or a number of other places). I see a lot of them in use for projects on here. They might be a bit pricey for what you are looking for though. I would advise not buying cheap RF links on sparkfun as I have first hand experience with them and they don't work.
It looks like you want to do something that is fairly simple though, so there might be a cheaper alternative.
my suggestion would be to check out ebay. they have a good selection of rf remote keyfobs that you should be able to adapt to work with an arduino. most have relays preattached but im sure there would be some sort of way to run an input pin to detect a button press with most of the ones ive seen. plus theyre usually pretty cheap
Or this could work, if about 50 yards reach is enough.
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/433mhz-rf-link-kit-p-127.html
I am looking for a hardware-supplier myself that ships to gemany or is located in germany and that can supply me with 433- or 857 MHz RF Trancievers. The RFT has to be small in size and should cost less than 15,- $ shipping included. Also it should connect through serial port to Arduino using the Arduino's 5V power supply to power itself. The above link comes very close. This on one chip would do the trick.
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I'm quite desperate so ANY HELP AT ALL is appreceated!
I allready placed a post in the german subforum.
Thanks for the suggestions...I'll look into them and hope to make it work.