Multiple arduino Wireless communication I would like to know what device and model to use for an application where I will have 1 arduino as a master micro controller waiting to receive data from 5 slave arduino microcontrollers.
The Master arduino will be connected to local network via Ethernet cable so once it receive data from a Slave controller it needs to post to server the information, get a response back and in case the response is a &quot;true&quot; value then the Master need to talk back to the Slave in order to turn a LED on.
There will be cases when maybe 3 of the Slaves will send data at the same time, this doesn't mean at exactly the same millisecond. So I don't know if there will be data lost.
I was reading that Xbee maybe is the best device because it has a feature that will hold the data until there is a success communication with slave.

Is this a doable and &quot;easy&quot; task using Xbee? Anyone that already try to do something like this that can guide me?

I was reading that there is a device nRF24l01 that is very cheap and can do exactly what I need. Just that I don't really know how to start.


Appreciate any advice or help.
It really depends on the communication range and context required.

If your slaves are within 10-20 meters from the master device and the environment is not polluted (in terms of magnetic field) you can achieve good results with very inexpensive nRF24L01+ modules which operate in the 2.4GHz.

If you need to cover greater distances (in the order of 100 meters) or a polluted environment then you have to resort to shorter wavelengths or more powerful devices, but that brings in the question on how are you powering your slaves: on battery power those ranges get pretty power hungry.

Generally speaking I would say this question should be rejected as it's going to start a debate rather than provide a solution.

You can get some introductions on how to use nRF24L01+ modules simply searching online:


some posts on my blog
the Arduino library I always advice
a pretty valid guide