Which Technology to use for Distance

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

Hello,

I have been experimenting with bluetooth but I need a solution that can two way communicate with a cell phone at a minimal distance of 100 feet indoors.

While bluetooth has a 300+ foot range on class 1 bluetooth devices, phones are a class 2 apparently as I recently found out, and as so their transmitting power is limited. The max range you can apparently get out of two way communication with a cell phone is around 33 feet. On bluetooth shields you can usually program what power you want to send to tx which allows you to adjust the range. On the phone side, I haven't been able to figure out if that is possible so I believe 33 feet is the max for bluetooth.

Question 1
What other options are available for two way commuincation with a cell phone at a minimal distance of 100 feet, and a tax distance of 200 feet? I would prefer to not use any middle man relay methods such as phone towers, or wifi modems.

Question 2
Are there any arduino shields that have this technology that is recommend so I can test it out?

Question 3
Also, what is the difference in arduino.cc and arduino.org? More specifically, I was on the Nordic Semiconductors site trying to figure out if they offered a technology that solved the problem above, and they have This contest where the winners receive an arduino Primo but the link to the contest is Arduino - Home which is .org rather than .cc and the boards they list there are different from the ones listed on the arduino.cc product page.

I like the fact that the board this contest is for has the memory of the mega, the size of uno, more power efficient, and has built in bluetooth and wifi. Question 4However, would this be programmable with the arduino IDE so that the libraries that I am use to will work? Question 5If I had a question later on regarding the board if I signed up and won it, would the arduino forum be able to help or is arduino.org a competitor that no one likes?

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  1. You could use an ESP8266 in AP(access point) mode. That way you can directly connect to the ESP8266 WiFi with your phone and are not relying on a router.

  2. You can get ESP8266 DOIT shields for about $7 on Aliexpress if you want to use the ESP8266 to provide WiFi communication to a standard Arduino board or you can get standalone ESP8266 boards for $2.60(WeMos D1 Mini) that you can directly program using the ESP8266 Arduino core.

  3. Browse through these articles: Arduino Vs Arduino | Hackaday. There is also a statement from arduino.cc somewhere on the blog and one on arduino.org as well.

  4. You will probably need to use the arduino.org IDE to use that board unless a 3rd party decides to add support to the arduino.cc IDE(the arduino.cc developers are definitely not going to do it). This hasn't happened yet for any of the arduino.org boards unfortunately. As for how good the support arduino.org provides for that board I can't say. They seem to be trying to give away a bunch of "developer edition" Primos in hope the community will do a bunch of the work for them.

  5. I always try to help the people with arduino.org hardware but I'm limited because I don't own any of that hardware and I have no experience with their IDE. I think most people here are the same way, though some are more anti-.org than others. You will find quite a bit of experience here with the ESP8266 that provides WiFi on that board but the main processor is not used on any other Arduino board so you're probably going to have a hard time with it. I prefer to use popular, well supported processors. I'm sure the Primo is a great board if you know your stuff but if I won it I'd just throw it in my electronics junk pile because I'd rather pay money for hardware that has a strong community to provide information and code than spend a ton of time trying to figure out how to use free hardware that there is very little information, example code, libraries, etc. for. Some people enjoy exploring new hardware and I'm certainly grateful to them. A perfect example is ESP8266. When it first came out there was very little information, most people were just using it as a serial module. Some smart people spent a bunch of time figuring it out and now the rest of us are benefiting from their efforts.

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A perfect example is ESP8266. When it first came out there was very little information, most people were just using it as a serial module. Some smart people spent a bunch of time figuring it out and now the rest of us are benefiting from their efforts.

Amen. And I am not one of those smart ones but the bulk of the Arduino effort is from igrr: The Arduino core is here; GitHub - esp8266/Arduino: ESP8266 core for Arduino

You will find a rather active forum for the Arduino port of the ESP8266 here: ESP8266 Arduino - Everything ESP8266

Unless your need is rather basic, you should build an account above and direct issues there ... IMO.

I have a few ESP8266 under Arduino examples on my pages: Here...

Of particular note here, is thereby lowering the power requirements down to the Nano'ish area.

Question 1
What other options are available for two way commuincation with a cell phone at a minimal distance of 100 feet, and a tax distance of 200 feet? I would prefer to not use any middle man relay methods such as phone towers, or wifi modems.

The distance is no problem with WiFi ... I stuck a wireless AP up in my attic for doing time transmission around the house ... it seems that it can be seen around the neighborhood rather well.

The issue is you want 2-way communications which is somewhat different that the standard web'ish technology of old based on client-server. You are going to have to study client-side javascript and node.js or you may explore more modern technologies under HTML5 such as websockets. Anyway, take it easy, do a step-by-step study program and know that igrr has many, many examples that get loaded with the ESP8266 core files.

Good luck!

Ray