In simple remote control or data transmission scenarios, information travels one-way only. Here, dedicated senders and receivers are best used.
In more sophisticated scenarios, true two-way communication is required:
- Acknowledgement: Sending confirmations that data transmissions were received correctly
- Messengers: Sending text messages
Sophisticated Remote Controls
Simple remote controls can control remote devices fairly reliably. You typically see the effect (i.e. an opening garage door). If the transmission was lost, and the garage door won’t open, you get a bit closer to it and try again.
Scenarios Requiring Acknowledgement
In scenarios where you can’t immediately see the effect of the transmission, additional acknowledgements are often used.
For example, when you build a switch board to control electric appliances in the house, you may want to actually see the status of each device, and whether it has responded appropriately.
In these scenarios, transceivers are needed that can both send and receive data.
A remote control in this case would use one transceiver. Initially, it would send out the same remote control signal, just like a dedicated sender would. Except that the transceiver would go into receiver mode once it has sent the control signal, and wait for confirmation.
On the remote side, another transceiver would be in receiver mode and pick up the signal. It would then enable or disable the intended appliance. At the same time, it would send back a confirmation so that the remote control knows the state of the controlled device.
Clone Remote Controls
A transceiver can also be used to clone an existing remote control.
Since regular remote controls can send out fixed control codes only, either your garage door or plug (etc) came with a number of remote controls that all share the same hardware id, or you are left with just one remote control.
Cloning a remote control is done by a transceiver. In learning mode, it uses its receiver to pick up and store the signal from the original remote control. Once done, it can then use its sender to play back the recorded control signals, mimicking (cloning) the original remote control.
This way, you can have as many remote controls for a given remotely controlled device as you want.
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(content created Apr 15, 2024)