Trawling the making sites on the internet. Digging through ideas and components for making interactive light displays. We are looking to have kids walking around a country town with lanterns which interact with each other as well as with display sites. RuBee looks interesting but the frequency it uses is not legal for unlicensed use in Australia. RFID could be useful and is legal to use. The distances for interaction might be a bit small. Bluetooth would cost more for the technology in the lanterns. A low power radio circuit using an ISM band with receivers in the lanterns could be useful. Currently looking at using an Arduino chip and home built circuit. The cost looks around @AU$35 which is still a bit spendy. ZigBee is cheaper than Bluetooth but more expensive than Arduino. Hoping that we can find a simple solution which makes things interesting so that we can have some fun with the creative possibilities of light and sound. Fingers crossed.
Note: Thanks to OldMiner for thoughts.