ZigBee and the Rover
Anyone working in the Embedded field by now has caught the wireless ZigBee buzz and RoverLORD is no exception. Digi has a pretty strong line of ZigBee products.
Adding ZigBee to the Rover… Scary Scary!
I admit that ZigBee is pretty intimidating but getting him up and running was less than a day with the Rabbit code.
The first thing you want to realize is that you can set up one of the ZigBee modems to fake out a serial port. Why is that important? It means my Rover doesn’t need to know “thing one” about ZigBee. He just writes or reads with his serial port and the modem does all the work. If there is no need to worry about the ZigBee software, I don’t increase my project’s code size and my CPU doesn’t have to carry the overhead either.
On the other end I have an RCM4510W acting as the ZigBee coordinator to the Rover’s ZigBee end device. He comes up using our ZigBee API, sends off a command to set the Rover’s modem as a transparent serial port and then sits there listening as my rover happily chatters away to his fake serial port. Little does he know that every log entry is being passed wirelessly to my other Rabbit where I can easily dump the data into a log file.
ZigBee at Play
In this video you can see our Rover happily face-planting into a cube wall while he reliably sends us a description of his many woes via the ZigBee connection back to my PC.
You will see an XBee Series 2 modem on the Rover in the video and in the image below.
You can see the blue ZigBee Modem on the PCB.
How did ZigBee’s creators mandate that it be a He? Looks pretty unisex to me. But that’s not important. I want to speak with him:
…Hello? Hey, how are you?
….What’s your number?
….??? Wha…? Why do people always answer the phone like that? How do I know my number like that?….OK, here it is: RCM4510W, but people call me R2-D2.
….Thank you. How can I help you?
…I was excited to know that you run with modems and rabbits, even those with a code in their nose. It helps that you totally understand Digi, too. I need someone to help me with my computer. I am hopelessly compromised, digitally speaking, and at war with user manuals and their companions. When can you get here (I do understand it could take quite a while; what is your thing with walls?)
…My name is ZigBee.
…What kind of answer is that?
…It means I be zigging when you be zagging. Good luck with that computer.
….$$%*@!(*&~~@