Help With Automatic Locking Door (school project)

[hunterbryce1]

Hello, me and my friend are working on our senior project for our engineering class at school and have hit a brick wall when it comes to Arduino. We are trying to create an automatic locking door with a servo motor, controlling a deadbolt. We currently have 2 arduino uno boards, and the cheap RF transmitter/receiver set. We would like to know if we should look at an XBee as a better wireless option, and whether or not the system could be activated by being a certain distance from the door, or if a button/switch on a remote would be necessary. We also have a budget of $50 to keep in mind.

[Felix]

We would like to know if we should look at an XBee as a better wireless option.
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We also have a budget of $50 to keep in mind.

$50 is very optimistic, that will just about buy you 2 xbees. You could just get a pair of RFM69 radios and make them work with your UNOs (you will have to do voltage transition since UNOs are 5v and RFM69 are 3.3v). Lots of threads in the forum and google about how to to that, search "UNO RFM69"

Other than that you can use any wireless system and many ways to control - buttons is just one example. Wiring and coding this will be a good (yet very steep) learning experience. Good luck and please share your progress and we will try to assist throughout.