Since the different series Xbee’s are not compatible, it seems like there would be a market for an Xbee Translator. It would be a board where you put two Xbees of different incompatible types, and the board does all the translation needed to join the networks.
For example: Need to use 900mhz for range as part of a already established 2.4ghz xbee network? Get one of these boards, plug in power, a 2.4ghz xbee, and a 900mhz xbee, and have it all automagically work.
Example 2: Have an existing Series 1 network, but want to move forward with Series 2 for mesh/Zigbee? Take this board, plug in power, a Series 1 xbee, and a Series 2 xbee, and have it all automagically work.
Considering the premium cost of xbee’s, you can’t just chuck an existing network when a better version comes along. So, a product such as this would be extremely useful to have.
Brian
I’m not sure what “translation” would be needed. If you want to connect to both a 2.4GHz network and a 900MHz comm link, you attach both kinds of XBees to your controller, and have it read one and send the data out the other. In fact, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t just connect the DIN of one module to the DOUT of the other. If you really have a need for this, you might just try that. If it works, the board would be very easy to make.
Of course there are a lot of more complicated things that XBees do that wouldn’t work with that, like that Series 1/2 example you gave, but it’d be a good start on the 2.4/900 translation. In fact the Stratostar Balloon instrument package uses 2.4GHz XBees to talk among the pods, and to the command pod, and then uses a 900 MHz XBee to talk to the ground.
Yep, that’s pretty much the idea. I didn’t say it was a complicated one. :+D It would be like a Super Explorer, capable of taking a single serial source and translating it to multiple Xbee-compatible formats.
Brian
kd5crs:
Since the different series Xbee’s are not compatible, it seems like there would be a market for an Xbee Translator. It would be a board where you put two Xbees of different incompatible types, and the board does all the translation needed to join the networks.
For example: Need to use 900mhz for range as part of a already established 2.4ghz xbee network? Get one of these boards, plug in power, a 2.4ghz xbee, and a 900mhz xbee, and have it all automagically work.
Example 2: Have an existing Series 1 network, but want to move forward with Series 2 for mesh/Zigbee? Take this board, plug in power, a Series 1 xbee, and a Series 2 xbee, and have it all automagically work.
Considering the premium cost of xbee’s, you can’t just chuck an existing network when a better version comes along. So, a product such as this would be extremely useful to have.
Brian
To play with meshes, I recommend using DigiMesh with Series 1 rather than ZigBee on series 2. Unless you want to know ZigBee itself, rather than meshing as a topology.
If you don’t need meshing, just use series 1 with 802.15.4 peer to peer addressing. It’s kind of like the ad-hoc mode of WiFi (no access point), no coordinator.