wifi confusion

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
1

I am still waiting for my UNOs to arrive, so in the meantime I have been reading everything I can so that I will be ready to start experimenting.

I eventually realized that at some stage I would want to communicate to (and between) the UNOs wirelessly. So I started searching for my options, and this is where I got hopelessly confused. Some boards looked like UNO clones with WiFi added, but all of them seem to mention Arduino compatibility without any other explanation.

Can any body explain to me what I would need to communicate between my barebones UNOs wirelessly. If its not too much trouble, a link to the parts required would be a fantastic help. Also will it be possible to communicate from my PC to the UNO wirelessly?

Thanks in advance for any assistance provided.

Cliff

2

on further exploration, it seems I was looking at a arduino clone with wifi that is cheaper than most arduino shields. It was a WeMos( with around 4MB of ram) for $10. I have ordered one to check it out.

In the meantime, I am still interested in a reply to my original post.

Thanks
Cliff

3

I'll put this answer here as well:

Can any body explain to me what I would need to communicate between my barebones UNOs wirelessly.

There are many, many, options. And sub-options. You mentioned WeMOS, which does 802.11 "WiFi" neworking. That usually requires an access point or router as well (I guess that theoretically, an ESP8266 can do "point-to-point" connections without a router, but that's more difficult, and may not be possible with other WiFi add-ons.) There is also Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (which is quite different), Zigbee, and a host of simpler radios (and not so simple: Complete List Of Wireless IoT Network Protocols | Link Labs Which one you would use would depend on your requirements for range, bandwidth, power consumption, and a bunch of other things. All of them can talk to a PC "somehow"; only a couple won't require additional hardware.

A lot of the "wireless shields" for Arduino are unfortunately quite expensive compared to consumer wireless products ("$25 for an Arduino and $50 for a WiFi101 shield when I can buy a tplink router for $20?" Yep. Sigh. Economies of scale.) It's getting better: Arduino 101 does BLE for $30 and MKR1000 does WiFi for $35...