Starter Projects for Zigbee Mesh Sensors

First 3 Projects for Mesh Air Station

Experiment # 1: Zigbee & Xbee Configuration

Debug serial output stream from “dumb” node and establish working code base for 3 basic sensor types. The goal will be to simply configure a Xbee node using the USB based board, disconnect it, and then have “sensors” drive data through to a serial port on another board. For this project I think using a crappy PC with a serial port will be best, so we separate out issues from using the micro controller board.

1. Go through Xbee API Manual and select settings appropriately. This is covered in the “Air Station Manual Deconstruction” Presentation.

2. Configure the module.

3. Connect a second module to receive the data, and dump via serial port to PC.

4. Workout basic parsing code before trying to implement on the more challening uC platform.

Experiment # 2: Micro controller Interfacing

Implement Maxim 1-wire and use SPI bus for ChipCap device. 1-wire example code is available from Maxim as well as a multitude of sources. ChipCap uses SPI/I2C which will be supported in HW on the AT91SAM7S chips.

1. Get familiar with uC board and do a couple of the basic demo programs.

2. Implement “Bit-Banged” 1 wire code using basic IO pin functions & Pullups.

3. Implement either I2C or SPI code for ChipCap Sensors.

Experiment #3: Synthesis

1. Re-write code on uC to receive messages via serial port on uC.

2. Possibly integrate wireless reception and localized polling.

3. Implement interface for logging/transmitting data upstream.