Radios for Remote Sensing

By: doctek

2010-09-26 18:18:33

Most of you folks know that I created a ZigBee radio design using the Atmel AT86RF230B a few months back and that I keep saying that I'll make it work "real soon now". Well, after a concentrated effort over the last two weeks, I have two of the radios talking! (I'm excited anyway.) One is hooked to a Teensy2++ as the Coordinator (a ZigBee term) and sends received data out the USB/serial link to display in a terminal window. The other uses a Teensy2, configured as a ZigBee Device, which sends a reading every ten seconds to the Coordinator for display.

They just started talking properly yesterday at 11:00pm, so I haven't had a lot of time to test them. What limited testing I've done shows a range around 100 feet. That's with the Coordinator inside and the Device outside wandering around with me. That means I can monitor stuff outside on my 50x100 estate and send the results inside without wires!

The picture shows one of the radios attached to the Teensy2 and floating above it. The BOM with the PCB is well under $10.

I'll have the units to demonstrate tomorrow night. See you then.

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