hi Sparkfun guys and girls,
have you ever considered making a breakout board for one of the many 2.4GHz SPI transceiver chips on the market?
the CYRF6936 for example has a huge amount of functionality.
from the datasheet:
“”“DSSS data rates up to 250 kbps, GFSK data rate of 1 Mbps”“”
so DSSS means it is largely immune to other RF interference from other 2.4GHz devices. (WiFi, etc.)
so what’s the advantage of one of these over existing RF solutions like the ZigBee or NORDIC devices i hear you ask?
low latency was the big selling point for me. you have direct SPI access to the transmit and receive buffers.
my project is a radio control system for model aircraft so ZigBees high latency is a deal breaker.
anyone who wants to stream digital audio signals will also appreciate the low latency.
without an RF power amp the range of a pair of naked CYRF6936 is around 30meters indoors. (this figure varies a lot depending on the configuration options selected.)
any standard WiFi power amp can boost that to over 1km.
i have documented some basics on how to configure the CYRF6936 here:
http://sites.google.com/site/mrdunk/int … ontrollers
if there was sufficient interest i could do more work on that page.
the existing commercially available CYRF6936 breakout boards are listed on my web page in the link.
one of the issues with the existing commercially available CYRF6936 breakout boards is the 2mm spacing on the connector making it awkward for hobbyists to connect to their (2.54mm) projects.
anyways,
let me know what you think.
dunk.