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April 5, 2008

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Xbee Radios

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Xbee Radios

Moving data around, ify you are making toy, wearables, performance all requires wireless.

  • Bluetooth is high-powered. It doesn’t do any routing. Bluetooth is high in bandwith, you can do sound and video, it is not neccesarily fast. It is not cheap. Better if you are talking to your computer since it is not cheap.
  • RF. Radio frequencies. Low level rf devices. They are cheap. transmit and receive pair, Low in reliability. No address and no protocol built-in. You have to write it yourself.
  • Xport - WiPort. Plenty of bandwith, definitely standardized and fast, not so cheap, routing doesn’ happen on these directly. *Easy radios, these are similar to xbee and fifty bucks each and not standardized.
    *Zigbee & 802.15.4. Zigbee is built on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. It is just a protocol. XBee radios can be configured with or without ZigBee. Both ways are useful. If you want to do a pair to piar connection you don’t have to care about about Zigbee. *802.15.4 is designed up to be low power, when it is off it is sleeping and no voltae spending at all. They can sleeep up to 3 mins. thisis great if you are going to send your sensor and leave it for a long time. They go to a ?? sicklep?? sleep pattern. They are cheap. They run on a standart. 802.15.4.
  • Topologies, singe peer, multi-peer and also broadcast. Everyone can talk to everyone else but there is no routing going on. Zigbee adds to the possiblities. We add routing. You can spread out pretty easily with Zigbee. When you put the firmware you can load them as coordinator or router or slave. New zigbees are coming with new technologies that you don’t have to set those up. Network can run without a coordinator but it doesn’t start running without a coordinator. Purposeof coordinator is to send address and setup the channel etc. *Xbee radios have so many different manufacturrers now, and now Xbee pro is coming. Xbee module is 30-100 m range, $19. Xbee Pro (100-1.6km range) $32. Breakup board fixes your spacing between the pins, and also it is coming with the titles which makes it easy to use.
    MaxStream
  • Apart from normal pins, you can actually Analog to Digital (AD) and that means you can hook up a sensor to your XBee without a microcontroller. RSSI does PWM the led and let you know how much signal you are getting to. *Remember, run only +3.3v. The regulator usually has a different pin arrangement:G-O-I. / Normal ones I-G-O.
  • Always use decoupling capacitors. The radios often don’t work without them.
  • SErial wiring works normally. Tx/Rx.
  • PIC and Arduino both can run on 3.3 volts.
  • XBee practical Example: Paired communication between two microcontrollers. Includes building and wiring and building
  • Association indicator ASS.T flashing means any information that chip sends will transmit to some other Xbee.
  • GetXbee on the Internet.
  • TCP/IP -> serial -> 802.15.4/Zigbee . Also link Bluetooth, or RS-232 cell phone GPS anthying that supports TTY Serial.
  • Time, publishing status, methods & variables for Objects, Solving the toaster problem.
  • Programming arduino by Radio: Put an Arduino on the ceiling undewater or stuffed in a turkey. Still be able to change and improve its behaviours.

Each radio has two separate addresses on it, SL, SH serial number saddressand and also local 16 bit adress (MY). Every radio is broadcasting on a different channel. You confugre what you are local address is,

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