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I have about 10 Arduinos that have sensors attached, which report information back around my house. I would like to have a RPi 2, because they have nice screen and GUI options, to collect the information and display it accordingly.

I am looking for success stories on what wireless parts you used to get these two working. The the wireless must be able to penetrate a brick wall about 120ft away.

Thanks for replying, I edited the response above.

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    The range requirement is going to be your main challenge. If for some reason you end up with a radio technology that does not integrate readily with the pi, you can always use another arduino/atmega on USB-serial or logic level serial as a gateway between the master radio and the pi.
    – Chris Stratton
    Commented Oct 3, 2015 at 16:40
  • Please check arduino.stackexchange.com/search?q=raspberry+multiple+arduino there might be a question that greatly resembles yours, read them first, dealing with the same project they can have other/better approaches or the same difficulties.
    – aaa
    Commented Nov 2, 2015 at 21:33

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There's many options you could use.

The simplest, though most expensive, would be to equip all your Arduinos with WiFi shields and connect a USB WiFi dongle to the Pi. The Pi could run in AP mode (investigate hostapd) so you don't have to connect them all to your internet router.

A cheaper option, though harder to work with on the Pi, would be to use the incredibly cheap but popular nRF24L01+ modules. There are libraries aplenty for the Arduino, but I am not aware of code for the Pi (though there probably is somewhere if you google for it).

And then there are options in between which vary in price and complexity.

Of course, you haven't mentioned range, only a brick wall. The right choice could well be affected by the range of communication you need - do you go for the bare nRF28L01+ with a range of maybe 10m, or the one with the power amplifier and SMA antenna with a range of many hundreds of meters? Is WiFi going to be long enough range? Would a 433mHz module be a better choice? All these questions and more need to be answered, and the best way is for you to describe your setup in detail, including what the longest range is you need to deal with, what amount of data you will be sending, do you need ultra low power to save batteries, etc.

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  • I only saw 3 Google results after clicking your nrf28l01 link.
    – Jerry
    Commented Nov 2, 2015 at 21:06
  • That was a typo - should have been nRF24L01
    – Majenko
    Commented Nov 2, 2015 at 21:10
  • Thanks. Those look like neat units. Have you ever seen anything that uses the 433 or 315 spectrum that has similar range-boosting features (the amplifier and SMA connection)?
    – Jerry
    Commented Nov 2, 2015 at 21:16
  • @Jerry I can't say as I have, no.
    – Majenko
    Commented Nov 2, 2015 at 21:37
  • That seems strange to me, since the lower frequencies should be able to go through obstacles better, and since they don't interfere with the noisy 2.4/5.8 GHz spectrum. I'm guessing maybe the FCC and other groups regulate it.
    – Jerry
    Commented Nov 2, 2015 at 22:40
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I use the ESP8266 to get the data from my arduino to my webserver using wlan. You could easy install a webserver on your pi and connect it to your wifi, or just use a server online. So you can install on all places where you get WLAN. Also you could use a repeater if your wlan is not strong enough.

Thats how my projekt works (Water level messure)

  1. Get range from ultrasonic sensor (every minute)
  2. Send data to the ESP8266 using SoftwareSerial
  3. Send getRequest with WLAN to my php page on the Server
  4. Save Data to MySql Database
  5. Show the Data Online with php and a javascript graph lib

My example is one way Arduino to Server, but you could easy communicate back to each of your arduinos.

good luck :)

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You could use an xBee.

I have 2 of these and they are really easy to set up. Here is a link to the data sheet: https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Wireless/Zigbee/XBee-Datasheet.pdf

Link to site: https://www.digi.com/lp/xbee

These I believe can interface to the GPIO of the pi - as i seem to recall doing that myself. Either I did that or used an arduio to get the readings and had the arduino feed the readings to the pi GPIO pins - either way the modules make sending data wireless super easy.

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