Running RF and IR transmitters and receivers on same Arduino

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
1

Recently I have been playing with some simple RF transmitters/receivers, and have gotten them to work quite well. Now I am thinking of making an Arduino-based laser tag game, and would like to know a few things before I go about planning and buying everything :slight_smile:
First of all, I would like to use an IR emitter and receiver for shooting/hitting, along with RF transmitters/receivers for things such as Arduino-controlled "power-up boxes" that can give you more ammo, different gun, etc., and possibly shorter-range gun-to-gun communication.

I would like to know if it is possible to have a single Arduino that can "shoot" the IR laser, know when it gets hit by another gun, can at least receive RF signals, and possibly transmit RF signals (only for gun-to-gun communication, probably won't do this, but I would like to know)

Amplifying signals doesn't need to be addressed at this time, only if the Arduino can send data out of the IR and receive data through RF and IR. If this is possible with one Arduino that would be great, but I am okay with using two Arduino boards, one for shooting, the other for receiving.

Code examples would be helpful too, thanks!

2

You are likely to run into problems with resource conflicts, for example Timer1 is often used for transmission and reception of signals, for both IR and RF. The libraries don't share.

Also, you have to avoid blocking code, so study the "How to do several things at once" example in the programming forum section.