X Bee Reliability

Wireless & IoT
1

With peoples experience, is the X Bee very reliable say if I was to use it in an area where many people might be using cell phones.

I am constructing a robot to use as a promo, but am concerned that I might tend to lose communication between the Xbee on the robot and my control device, where I will demoing the robot. I present in larger crowds like at our local summer fair, and am concerned that I might drop communication if there are a lot of people using their cell phones? I imagine as long as many are not using the WIFI it should not be too much of a problem.

thanks for any comments

2

I have no problems using XBees in the presences of my wireless router (WiFi).

To be sure use API frames and enable ACKs and retransmissions.

To be even more sure use some checking within your data payload, check sum, redundant data that is checked and verifed.

3

johncap:
With peoples experience, is the X Bee very reliable say if I was to use it in an area where many people might be using cell phones.

I am constructing a robot to use as a promo, but am concerned that I might tend to lose communication between the Xbee on the robot and my control device, where I will demoing the robot. I present in larger crowds like at our local summer fair, and am concerned that I might drop communication if there are a lot of people using their cell phones? I imagine as long as many are not using the WIFI it should not be too much of a problem.

thanks for any comments

No...

Perhaps you mean the XBee that operates in 2.4GHz. This is the same band that is used by Bluetooth and by WiFi. The Xbee uses IEEE 802.15.4 which is 2MHz wide signal. WiFi is 20MHz. Both are listen-before-transmit (CSMA/CA), so the coexist fine. Bluetooth in the same band is IEEE 802.15.3 and uses frequency hopping to avoid interference.

Cell phones operate, in No. America, in 700MHz (LTE data), 860MHz (approximately and 1900MHz (approximately).