There are many great ways to wirelessly trigger remote microcontroller effects — from Bluetooth, to WiFi, to IR, and beyond. Sometimes, however, range and interference from crowded, smart phone saturated airwaves can make those difficult to use. That’s why I’m excited about the packet radio Feather microcontrollers! These devices operate in the 900MHz range (400MHz range in Europe) and are excellent for use at festivals, in theatres, and anywhere else where you need to reliably send remote, low-bandwidth commands. Plus, they work with the entire line of the FeatherWings to control things such as relays, motors, NeoPixels, MP3 playback, and servos.
Build this powerful RF Feather-based controller to wirelessly trigger props, lights, effects, and more!
Using Feather Packet Radio boards (RFM69HCW or RFM9X LoRa), you can send commands at great distances — 500 meters line of sight for RFM69HCW, and 2 kilometers for LoRa! — with no worries about pairing, scanning, and so on. Just a good, old fashioned, magical, invisible wire that connects all of your devices easily!
This guide shows how you can build a versatile controller to take on a nearly limitless variety of remote triggering needs. You’ll use a 16-button Trellis pad to send commands, rotary encoder knob to select effects banks, and an OLED display to keep it all straight!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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