After recovering earlier today, I’ve been reading up on these XBee RF Modules. Effectively you can hook two of them up and get a point to point wireless serial link between them at a fairly reasonable distance. They also support some form of mesh networking, so I assume you could have loads of them scattered about all communicating together.
You can customise the code running on them, adding your own application software, and they have a fair number of General Purpose IOs on them… so you could easily make them talk to all sorts of things.
I’m trying to think of something to do with them: a cheap (10 quid each) and easy wireless link to a tiny remote device running your own code; some sort of remote control or sensor thing springs to mind, but I’m trying to think what. Anyone else have any ideas? e.g. a mesh network of remote controlled LED displays all responding to some kind of environmental stimulus might be kinda cool.
I’m also going to get one of these wt12 bluetooth modules. They’re sort of the same idea as the Zigbee (wee bluetooth RF module running your own code), but they’re more expensive. I need bluetooth support for a specific reason though.
BTW: when I say the XBees have a “reasonable range”, the docs say they have a 40m range indoors, and up to 750m line of sight range outdoors!
Hmm, even though I felt really rough earlier today, I still managed to read another three chapters of my VHDL book… 🙂
adq 