Wireless Sensor Nodes for Arduino-based system?

Question

I'm new to electrical engineering, but have a software development background so I apologize if I'm missing something obvious. I want to tinker with sensors that interface with an Arduino, however, the use cases that I have in mind would require the sensors to be able to interface wirelessly with the Arduino. In my research so far, I've found that it seems common to use a sensor that is hard-wired to an Arduino, with the Arduino being wireless itself, so, you would need one Arduino for each wireless node. This wouldn't be practical for me in terms of cost.

I'm wondering if there are practical sensor nodes that have wireless capability, as I don't want a 1:1 sensor node to CPU ratio, rather, I'd like to have basic sensor input wirelessly to a single, centralized Arduino, which I would then connect to a full-fledged web server. Any info on this is much appreciated.

Answer 1

The cheapest option would be to use a very simple transmitter like the one found here.

The problem is you'd still need to read the sensor somehow to be able to send the data through the transmitter but that could be accomplished with a microcontroller that is much cheaper than a full-fledged Arduino. Each sensor would use a wireless transmitter to talk to a base (Arduino-based) with a receiver that would then act as the web server. That might be a bit of a daunting task if you're just starting out.