Wireless Push Button Devices

[Visual Excel]

I have just joined this forum in hope I can receive some guidance on how I can achieve my electronic project. I must warn you that I am a complete novice in the electronics world so if I have joined the wrong forum then please accept my apologies. On paper my requirements appear fairly straight forward but when I come to putting it into practice I haven't got a clue where to start, even down to where and how I can acquire/purchase the relevant components. To help my explanation I have attached a brief diagram to explain my requirements. The aim of my project is to create up to 8 handheld devices which on the press of a momentary switch send a unique keystroke (Alt+8 etc) wirelessly to a receiver which in turn is replicated on a laptop screen. The receiver must have the ability of receiving eight different keystroke signals at the same time. Where do I start or am I living in cloud cuckoo land? Thank you for any assistance anyone can provide Graham

 

[MikeMl]

How much time and effort are you willing to put into this? It requires learning to program a sophisticated microcomputer which has a USB, and interfacing the 8 wireless receivers to it. It also requires programming the Labtop in Visual Basic or other language... Wireless key fob transmitters are readily available.

 

[Visual Excel]

Hi Mike Thank you for your response. I am fairly conversant with VB and VBA so don't believe this will provide me with too many problems. Unfortunately I am totally alien to microcomputing so guess that will be where my problem lies. I am more than willing to expend time learning this process as I believe the long term benefits will outweigh the short term loses. However, I am wondering from your suggestion regarding wireless key fobs whether this would be an area to explore. Exactly how I get them to communicate with a receiver and laptop will be my learning curve.

 

[MikeMl]

... However, I am wondering from your suggestion regarding wireless key fobs whether this would be an area to explore. Exactly how I get them to communicate with a receiver and laptop will be my learning curve.

If you need to receive the key FoB signals simultaneously, then you will need eight receivers tuned to eight different frequencies. I'm not sure that you can tune the readily-available TX/RX to eight different channels.