Securifi Community Forum
Sensors and Home Automation => Home automation => Topic started by: wj on August 07, 2013, 01:16:23 am
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As I have quite a few custom homebrew 802.15.4 devices (they're not ZigBee as they run a completely custom simple protocol) I'm wondering if there are any provisions made to be able to send and receive raw 802.15.4 frames with the Almond+ without the ZigBee stack messing with it? What I have are LED dimmer controllers, remotes, garage door openers and a generic RS-485 interface, all are built around the Atmel ATMEGA128RFA1 MCU. As the codespace is limited and the devices does a lot more than just wireless communication there's little extra CPU time and memory available to do proper ZigBee (not mentioning any potential additional licensing), and I don't need the mesh networking part either.
I read somewhere that the 802.15.4 controller in the Almond+ could only do one profile at a time, could this mean that there's a way to have a "raw" profile of sorts loaded?
/wj
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if everything else fails, get e telos b (or similar) sensor node which comes with an USB interface.
I used those a lot on openWRT, and you´ll basicly end up with a java command line tool that allows you to send packets via the telos b´s radio, which you can alter in any way.
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As I have quite a few custom homebrew 802.15.4 devices (they're not ZigBee as they run a completely custom simple protocol) I'm wondering if there are any provisions made to be able to send and receive raw 802.15.4 frames with the Almond+ without the ZigBee stack messing with it? What I have are LED dimmer controllers, remotes, garage door openers and a generic RS-485 interface, all are built around the Atmel ATMEGA128RFA1 MCU. As the codespace is limited and the devices does a lot more than just wireless communication there's little extra CPU time and memory available to do proper ZigBee (not mentioning any potential additional licensing), and I don't need the mesh networking part either.
I read somewhere that the 802.15.4 controller in the Almond+ could only do one profile at a time, could this mean that there's a way to have a "raw" profile of sorts loaded?
/wj
I'm not going to answer your question in full here, as I simply don't know off hand if it'd be possible, but you're right in as far as most ZigBee controllers being limited to one profile at a time. I'll have to ask the guys and see if they have a better answer for you.
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Thanks for the input! If everything else fails I have built a couple of USB-to-802.15.4 dongles that exposes a simple HID-interface. Those are the current interface to my 802.15.4 setup until I get to play with the Almond+. Having everything in one box would definitely open up a lot of possibilities for others to use the devices.
From the searching I did it seems that the early prototypes of the Almond+ used one of the Atmel 802.15.4 tranceivers (possibly even the 128RFA1 MCU/RF combo?), but a move to Silicon Labs were suggested. Any more information about what chip that was finally selected?
/wj
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The final version of the Almond+ will indeed use Silicon Labs.
Sadly it looks like it's most likely not going to be possible to send raw 802.15.4 frames using the Almond+ due to chipset limitations. You're of course free to thinker with it, but there are no guarantees it'll work.
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The final version of the Almond+ will indeed use Silicon Labs.
Sadly it looks like it's most likely not going to be possible to send raw 802.15.4 frames using the Almond+ due to chipset limitations. You're of course free to thinker with it, but there are no guarantees it'll work.
It sounds like the EM351 chip from SiLabs? I don't have any experience with those chips but is not afraid to dive into it! :) Thanks for checking!
/wj