Arduino along with radio tx/rx

Question

I'm thinking about a project similar to the home-automation systems etc... Few problems came in the way, The cost of the Arduino radio receivers/transmitters is huge, especially if I need few of them, cheap low qualities are available, although not reliable for long range. my question is is it possible to make an AM / FM transmitter and receiver, connect them somehow to the Arduino, and make use of the received info?

making an FM transmitter etc... isn't that difficult but how to connect it to the Arduino and make the Arduino understand the incoming info?

any helpful infos are appreciated, thanks

Answer 1

You should look into nRF24L01+ radio modules. These are very cheap and robust RF transceivers. For longer range, try the one with external antenna. You can use these along with arduino pro mini to keep a small project size. Try getting 3.3V arduino pro mini so that you can power both of them using the same power source. In this case, you can also use 2XAA batteries for completely wireless projects.

You can find the arduino libraries here.

Answer 2

Buy not build is the key to not wasting your time especially if you value your time. How expensive are cheap ones...Maybe £4 each end. You couldn't design and build one cheaper. Do some research and see what real costs are. You'll probably be surprised.

And yes, making an FM transmitter is easy but making a decent FM receiver is not, definitely not.