Hi,
I run a research study and I have a pretty straight forward idea I’d like some advice making a reality.
I have a computer room with 8 computer stations all connected to the internet. I have a research assistant who helps people as they use the computers but she works in another office 500 ft away. She also moves around a lot during the day. When people finish each computer task they have to get up, walk down the hall and then knock on her door and wait. I want to build a low cost system that allows me to put a button box next to each computer station that people can activate when they’re done, wirelessly signaling a portable unit the research assistant can carry around with her so that she knows to go and check on them. Basically a wireless flight attendant call button like they use in airplanes.
My question is, what’s the most straight forward way to do this? I’ve used arduino systems before and I imagine using a couple Xbee pro units might do the trick. How hard would it be to program these though? I’m willing to spend a bit more money to get something more robust and easy to configure. Would I need to create a mesh network of the Xbee units. It also occurs to me that I could do something via the computers stations themselves using the internet. There’s already a strong wireless network throughout the entire building. But I feel like that might get complicated.
I also thought amount trying to set up some way of sending an SMS text via the computers’ internet connection to a cell phone that the Research Assistant would carry. Would that work? How might I go about setting that up?
thanks in advance for any advice!