RadioBoard (2011-01-20 18:43:04)

RadioBoard is a small, standalone low-power capable board (under development!) with some uC and some radio transceiver.

There is again (still) interest in digital radio technology, loosely related to vems. A Hungarian guy (vfx.hu who is very skilled engineer, but not too convenient to speak English) received 100 CC2500 chips at 2005-08-19 that we have access to. So a radio link is as close as you like, if you want to read some datasheet and play with PCB design.


Standalone universal radio-modem

Spending time on a standalone radio modem would be more productive, there is a strong demand for short range radio modems that can replace a rs232 cable. Pretty much like what bluetooth can allready do, but could be done maybe just cheaper.

Simple Radio (modem point-2-point link) - not very flexible; but for just datalogging a racecar, it's often enough.


Possible ways to do it

  • If one want to sell radio devices, they need to be EMC tested. This is the case with the zigbees and as far as I know also with bluetooth even when using build modules like one from Ezurio. And this is not cheap at all! (maybe someone knows more about this?)

Zigbee Applications

Zigbee are great with small battery operated devices.


I have made a while ago proto HW with Nordic and old Atmel AT90S2313 uC. This chip does not have HW SPI so it's done by software and atmel-nordic works fine.

I think now that my goal is to make wireless zigbee link to replace the RS232 so all tuning softwares and terminal connection could be done thru it as now. But my personal goal after all is to make other wireless devices, I like to have central locking system and also wireless LCD&keyb, not just replace wire to the laptop just like what bluetooth can do. Then these wireless devices needs to be used like comm commands. It needs vems code extensions, but it makes it really really flexible!

OR zigbee could be also connected I2C or SPI at vems, no need to touch comm commands if it's bad-bad. But then zigbee link cannot be used universal radio modem to replace RS232 connection. Give your opinion!


This project has been low priority for too long. Bad news also for marketing RadioBoard, maybe it will be too expensive to approve own radio devices. But still my project is going on, slowly.

Today I tested zigbee communication range indoors and it worked pretty well thru 2 walls near 10 meters distance (couldn't get further indoors). This with small chip antenna. Now my next plan is making a manufactured pcb's after I got new Nordic nRF24L01 chips. 24L01 has many very nice features.

I still haven't really get to know vems software, I would like wirelessly to:

It would be easy just to build a rs232 over zigbee, but how complex sw modifications would vems need if PS2/lcd data goes thru rs232? There will be microcontroller at both zigbee side, but is only possible way to make this like MegaSquirts MegaView does (acting as tuning program to view data at lcd, right?).


See also