Putting the PIC to sleep

That was my initial Idea, but then I would need to keep BT turned on, on my phone, which eats up battery. I was using BT because of ease of Use, no Fussyness to mess with or register settings. But your getting to my current line of thinking, moving away from BT in favor of "dumber" RF transmitters/receivers. I could still use a BT module, but the receiver would have to be plugged into the wall via those huge brick thingies (or a smaller used cellphone charger).

Ive looked at those common "RF link" transmitters/receivers (which are quite dumb) and I would need to come up with a payload scheme, or use the NRF24L01+, which is just as smart as the BT modules, but gives you a ton of configuration registers. It also has a sleep mode and interrupt registers for tx/rx.

Overclocked said:

That was my initial Idea, but then I would need to keep BT turned on, on my phone, which eats up battery. I was using BT because of ease of Use, no Fussyness to mess with or register settings. But your getting to my current line of thinking, moving away from BT in favor of "dumber" RF transmitters/receivers. I could still use a BT module, but the receiver would have to be plugged into the wall via those huge brick thingies (or a smaller used cellphone charger).

Click to expand...

The 'brick' PSU's don't have to be large, and you don't need a high power one.

Ive looked at those common "RF link" transmitters/receivers (which are quite dumb) and I would need to come up with a payload scheme, or use the NRF24L01+, which is just as smart as the BT modules, but gives you a ton of configuration registers. It also has a sleep mode and interrupt registers for tx/rx.

Click to expand...

Using the 'dumb' modules is covered in my tutorials, I bought a couple of NRF24L01's - but haven't got round to playing with them yet - apart from to notice they are a bit 'unusual' to drive

They use SPI, which is easy for me to use. To send data you toggle a line and just load up the register. But what I find odd is that data is LSB to MSB and not the usual MSB to LSB. I would rather use the Dumb modules, as they are low power and dont need much.

I have found **broken link removed** though, but documentation is seriously lacking.

This document helped me out a lot understanding the NRF modules, as did the data sheet, which is quite well put together.

http://www.diyembedded.com/tutorials/nrf24l01_0/nrf24l01_tutorial_0.pdf

You can have a re-transmitter which is powered from mains. The devices connect to it when needed and pass their data, then any other device can connect and download the data. This way the devices don't have to have their receivers constantly on (unless they need urgent response).

I have my wireless network working that way. They only have transmitters. An ethernet-connected controller is sitting inside my wall. If a remote controller needs some information, it sends a request to the home controller and gets the response. One of most useful features is time synchronization.

I do not have any answers for you but have a question. Have you looked into what happens to bluetooth pairing if you put the bluetooth module to sleep or power it down . Can you save the pairing info and restore it to the module after you power it back up. Presumably all info would be retained if the module can be put to sleep.

I have paired BT modules to each other but they still need time to start up. There is a "sniff" mode, but I will have to look and see if theres a power down mode.

I have given it a little bit more thought, and having the receiver run off of wallpower gives more design flexibility, ie I can use some nice LCDs, such as the ones from Nokia phones. This just might turn into something more than just a temperature sensor