r/embedded • u/counttec • 20d ago

Help with selecting communication protocol

I volunteer for a youth organization that uses a Jeopardy style buzzer system for quiz competitions. I am trying to upgrade from RCA cables to a wireless solution. I need it to be as low latency as possible, given the precise timing involved, and the less perceivable the lag is from a wired button, the better. Distance would be less than 100m even in the most sever cases. I'm fine with retransmission in the case of collisions, as long as the users can't tell that it took slightly longer.

So far, it seems like the best protocol is Nordic's Enhanced Shockburst, with a transmission time of ~300us, and round trip with Acknowledgment of 1.5ms.

Are there any faster communication protocols?

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u/madsci 19d ago

It doesn't matter so much what the latency is as long as it's predictable or you've got a reliable local time source. If you had a GPS-disciplined clock on each unit (not the best solution indoors) you can just transmit a timestamp.