Suggestions on wireless devices for beaglebone

I wanted to add wireless to my Beaglebone to be able to read values sent from remote wireless devices.

The application is for wireless door/window sensors like in a home security product.

I have been considering using xbee for this, one xbee connected to Beaglebone and each door/window will have a xbee that senses
door open/close via a hall effect sensor or a reed switch and then send the signal to the xbee connected to beaglebone.

After reading RL Budde post in the forum that he plans on using CC1101 for some wireless communication, will CC1101 be suitable for my application.
I think using xbee for all senors will turn out to be expensive. I also came across the nordic nRF24L01 in the forum being used for wireless applications.

Any suggestions on what will be best suitable for my application and cost effective.

Regards

________________________________________
From: beagleboard@googlegroups.com [beagleboard@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Cyril G [cyrilgp@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2013 2:57 PM
To: beagleboard@googlegroups.com
Subject: [beagleboard] Suggestions on wireless devices for beaglebone

I wanted to add wireless to my Beaglebone to be able to read values sent from remote wireless devices.

The application is for wireless door/window sensors like in a home security product.

I have been considering using xbee for this, one xbee connected to Beaglebone and each door/window will have a xbee that senses
door open/close via a hall effect sensor or a reed switch and then send the signal to the xbee connected to beaglebone.

After reading RL Budde post in the forum that he plans on using CC1101 for some wireless communication, will CC1101 be suitable for my application.
I think using xbee for all senors will turn out to be expensive. I also came across the nordic nRF24L01 in the forum being used for wireless applications.

Any suggestions on what will be best suitable for my application and cost effective.

Regards

That CC1101 is an interesting part, it's in the 915 MHz ISM band so less line of sight requirements than ZigBee at 2.4GHz and probably able to permeate through concrete and wallboard better as a result. 900MHz is also less crowded than 2.4GHz ISM. There are 900MHz XBee modules as well, but higher priced than that CC1101 part you mention. The other consideration is how refined the mesh networking capabilities of that CC1101 part is; XBee has a mature mesh networking firmware that can use each XBee as a repeater so less LOS requirements from the BeagleBone.

So the salient points to consider: how big is your house; based on the construction of your house can the BeagleBone master node talk to each window/door sensor without the use of mesh networking in the 900MHz ISM band; if not, how refined is the mesh networking capability of the CC1101 compared with the XBees so each node can act as a mesh repeater to get everything back to the BeagleBone.

There are also the very cheap Nordic Semi nRF24L01+ modules that are available on Ebay. The nRF24L01+ is similar to the C1101, but is much easier to use and the modules are cheaper.

Leon

Thank you Greg for your inputs.I am designing this to work for a house of 2400 sft. say two floor and no concrete walls. Considering the facts you mentioned 2.4 Ghz xbee might be a better choice in terms of capabilities and maturity.

Thanks Leon,

I’ll check out the nordic devices.

The CC1101 is a radio transceiver, not a radio module, per se. It'll
transmit and receive at the frequency and modulation you specify, that's
about it. Comparing it to some Xbee modules that have a bit of a network
stack in them isn't really a reasonable thing to do.

You can think of a CC1101 as just a PHY layer, you supply the MAC
layer. So if you want to do mesh networking, go ahead, but usually
that's done at the MAC layer. If you want just a very simple radio
system, the CC1101 will work without much effort, but if you want
things like mesh networking, stick with something easy first, like an
XBee.

-Andrew

________________________________________
From: Andrew Bradford [andrew@bradfordembedded.com]
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2013 8:00 AM
To: beagleboard@googlegroups.com
Cc: Gregory Perry; cyrilgp@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [beagleboard] Suggestions on wireless devices for beaglebone

[snip]

The CC1101 is a radio transceiver, not a radio module, per se. It'll
transmit and receive at the frequency and modulation you specify, that's
about it. Comparing it to some Xbee modules that have a bit of a network
stack in them isn't really a reasonable thing to do.

You can think of a CC1101 as just a PHY layer, you supply the MAC
layer. So if you want to do mesh networking, go ahead, but usually
that's done at the MAC layer. If you want just a very simple radio
system, the CC1101 will work without much effort, but if you want
things like mesh networking, stick with something easy first, like an
XBee.

-Andrew

My assumptions on that part were based on TI's CC430-Based Wireless Mesh Network Mains Switch application paper, which references a mesh-based concentrator based on the CC1101 (the CC430F6137).

Sure, the CC430 can do a mesh network, if you have software for it.
Just the part itself, without any software loaded on it is pretty
useless. Can you link to that paper? Do you have software for the
CC430 already?

TI does sell a variant I think that comes with a few different stacks
pre-loaded on them from a few different vendors. If you want something
that's a bit more plug and play, check those out.

-Andrew

My assumptions on that part were based on TI's CC430-Based Wireless
Mesh Network Mains Switch application paper, which references a
mesh-based concentrator based on the CC1101 (the CC430F6137).

Sure, the CC430 can do a mesh network, if you have software for it.
Just the part itself, without any software loaded on it is pretty
useless. Can you link to that paper? Do you have software for the
CC430 already?

TI does sell a variant I think that comes with a few different stacks
pre-loaded on them from a few different vendors. If you want something
that's a bit more plug and play, check those out.

-Andrew

The CC430F6137 is the CC1101-based SOC with integrated RF radio section. No idea if it supports mesh networking out of the box. The XBees are nice, Maxstream has been developing that line for over a decade. They are also quite expensive, especially for building a multinode sensor network such as what the OP eluded to.

Thanks Andrew,

I think I’ll stick with xbee for now. Give that its been around a while and there is a lot of help/resources for xbee. And my application is such that more than one door/window sensor should be able to communicate to the central receiver connected to Beaglebone at the same time. letting the receiver know that more than one door/window is open.

Thanks for your suggestions.

*Cyril