Re: wireless communication for RF communications, I recommend Linx Technologies 
http://www.linxtechnologies.com/  They sell seperate transmitters, 
receivers, and antennas.  For two-way communication, you would need two 
pairs, so the price is around $30 for a bidirectional link.  They have 
speed ranges from 5kbps to 50kbps.  I've used their LC parts with the 
helical antennas and the work great.  The only problem is that they seem 
to want you to buy the eval kit for a particular part before they will 
sell you additional units, and that's pretty expensive and pretty 
useless.  The parts are all self contained with the only RF pin being the 
antenna, so as long as you mount the antenna close by, you don't need to 
worry about special design.  I mounted the LCs (which are surface mount) 
on a pc board, but for the other parts, the datalines should be able to 
handle wirewrapping, though I would solder in the power and antenna 
connections and put a bypass cap on the power.  You don't wont to recieve 
"RF" signals from your microcontroller.  

On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, Jonathan Swaby wrote:

> After reading some of the discussions about wireless communications, I
> remembered an article from Nuts and Volts ( http://www.nutsvolts.com ) May
> 1998. The title of the article is "Naked Data", Explore the power of
> wireless data communications using inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware. The
> article was written by Ryan Sheldon (http://members.aol.com/ncdcat). The
> article discusses using RF and IR as a 1200bps serial data link. The
> article shows schematics for some of the IR devices. The RF devices used
> are from MING (http://www.ming-micro.com/). Digi-Key carries their
> products, and the cost for a transmitter and receiver total less that
> 25.00. I have not tried the products but it seems like a good place to
> start experimenting. I know 1200Bps is not very fast, but some users might
> find that data rate acceptable. Also, this would be a one-way link.
> 
> 
> Jonathan Swaby
> Computer Services Specialist IV
> Student Affairs 
> Georgia Institute
>   of Technology
> 
> 404-894-5889
> 

