So it's like how Xbee radios use the Wifi radio frequency range, but use their own protocols and are actually 1-2 MHz off from Wifi?

Xbee hardware can be co-opted into Wifi transmission by an Arduino or more powerful processor: https://github.com/cjbearman/xbee-wifi-spi-arduino

I wonder if Xbee devices would be more suitable to this task.