Illuminated 'Push Button' Help

[pterodactyl]

Hello,
I have very little knowledge of electronics in general but I’m determined to implement this idea for an art project of mine ; )

I’d like to design a medium sized (4” x 2” x 3”) plastic(?) push button with some text on its face, e.g., ‘Press Here’.
I would like this button to illuminate when pressed and have the light go off upon release. Furthermore –
and here’s where it gets complicated – I would like each push of the button to wirelessly transmit
and log to a computer (placed a few meters away) that the button had been pushed.

I figure I could retrofit a common ‘push light’ for my button, etc., but I haven’t a clue how to get it to transmit and
log each push.

Any resources, reference or general guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!


pterodactyl

 

[davelectronic]

push button data switch

Hi there. This is going to need hard ware and software to create the log, if you have very limited electronics knowlege you have a hard task ahead. the hardware circuits got to comunicate with the pc wirelesly and create a log of the push swtch data, is it a simple push, pc records the action, or is the log data transfer file of actions on another device ? other members might have some ideas, but hardware remote and software program will probably be needed, not imposible but a fair challenge. Dave.

 

[pterodactyl]

Thanks Dave. Yes, it's a "simple push, pc records the action" kind of thing ; ) I may be naive but I was thinking I could set something up via WiFi or Bluetooth? And, it would be great if I could get this simple data into Excel - or something similar.

 

[davelectronic]

push button loging to pc

Hi there again. Yes i would go towards wifi or bluetooth, the former offers greater distance, i think the pc end of the problem not two hard to set up a network and log the action, its the button end of the configuration that needs the greater thought, modding an existing pc to perifaral piece of hard ware might be an idea, the action on the extened hardware could be seen as a push of a button with a bit of modding, some detail to look into but certainly possible. Dave.

 

[jackorocko]

Say hello to the arduino, it has a wifi shield and ethernet shield. There is even a simple data logger plugin that you could buy if you could always download the data.log later on.

Here is the link to the datalogger. http://www.ladyada.net/make/logshield/

 

[pterodactyl]

Very informative, thanks jackorocko!