Okay, I’m doing a project for school that’s pretty much like the game Battleship, only on a 20x10 grid behind a six foot barrier. We had to build a machine that could find 5 intersections and drop objects in the given targets without the team members seeing where they were aiming.
So we got the machine built, and I attached a photoelectric sensor on the arm to an LED on the tower, so that when the sensor crossed over a target with a flashlight in it, it would cause the LED to light up. It worked great except that the LED and the sensor were attached by a 20-foot wire, which jumped the pulley in the middle of competition.
We still advanced to state, so now we’re on round 2, and we’re trying to make it go wireless. We got the 315 MHz RF transmitter and receiver from the site. We wired the transmitter to the sensor, and the receiver to an LED light. We then attempted to try to get the sensor to light up the LED light to no avail. I’ve read the comments on the page, and it seems like everyone has used this setup in conjunction with an actual program that tells it what to do, but is it possible to just attach it with the sensor as the transmitter input? It doesn’t need to do anything else but sense the presence of the flashlight and send that info to the receiver that will then light up the LED light.
Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. If this is the wrong set-up, could you point me in another direction. Time is somewhat of a factor as is cost. Thanks so very much!
Congratulations on going to state competition with your team’s design. I’m afraid that you won’t be able to just connect the sensor to the transmitter and the LED to the receiver. As you may have surmised from reading the many posts on the forum, these tx/rx pairs need encoders/decoders in one form or another. I would recommend using an encoder/decoder pair from Rentron. They work very well:
Since you already have the receiver and the transmitter, pop for the encoder and decoder and you’ll be all set to go. Also check the rules for your competition. Some competitions do not allow wireless control of the contest machines. Good luck!
Thanks for the congratulations. In this competition, technical design and innovation (on a budget) are part of the score. If I can make this portion into a wireless project, the judges just may turn cartwheels. We are already using a remote control device with servo motors to deliver the objects so I know wireless solutions are rewarded.
I had a feeling there was something I was missing, I just wasn’t sure where to find the next step in the equation. Thank you very much for the help and the link. It looks like a pretty simple process. The encoder and decoder I ordered need no programming. I think I can just wire them up and be good to go.
Thanks again for you help. I appreciate it very much.
You are correct that you can use those encoder/decoder pairs without a micro processor. I have used them and they work great. They should do the job for you. The nice thing is that they handle the random noise that the receiver picks up so you get a reliable decode. It really can’t get much easier.
Please let everyone know how your competition turns out!
