[Tinyos-help] Atmel RF230
Hi all, I currently looking to integrate the RF230 transceiver from Atmel in one of my design and I just wonder if someone have something to tell about it. Is the chip follow the spec given by Atmel (sensitivity, timing, etc)? Is there a lot of bugs with the chips? How can it be compare to TI c2420 or Freescale MC1319x? In fact, I'm interested by all little thing you can have experienced with it and that are not documented ;) Thanks, Fred ___ Tinyos-help mailing list Tinyos-help@millennium.berkeley.edu https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinyos-help
Re: [Tinyos-help] Atmel RF230
Hi Fred, Crossbow's IRIS Mote already uses RF230 transceiver and is supported under MoteWorks and TinyOS 2.x. You can find product details at http://www.xbow.com/Products/productdetails.aspx?sid=264 I hope that helps, Giri From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frederic Beaulieu Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 12:00 PM To: tinyos-help@millennium.berkeley.edu Subject: [Tinyos-help] Atmel RF230 Hi all, I currently looking to integrate the RF230 transceiver from Atmel in one of my design and I just wonder if someone have something to tell about it. Is the chip follow the spec given by Atmel (sensitivity, timing, etc)? Is there a lot of bugs with the chips? How can it be compare to TI c2420 or Freescale MC1319x? In fact, I'm interested by all little thing you can have experienced with it and that are not documented ;) Thanks, Fred ___ Tinyos-help mailing list Tinyos-help@millennium.berkeley.edu https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinyos-help
Re: [Tinyos-help] Atmel RF230
Hi Fred, > I currently looking to integrate the RF230 transceiver from Atmel in one of > my design and I just wonder if someone have something to tell about it. Is > the chip follow the spec given by Atmel (sensitivity, timing, etc)? I cannot verify the sensitivity, but the published timings to control the state machine of the radio chip is correct. > Is there a lot of bugs with the chips? The basic operation mode works as advertised. The automatic mode had several errors and lack of configuration options that prevented the tinyos 2.x driver to use that mode. Nonetheless, the basic mode is perfectly appropriate to do everything at least as good as the cc2420 driver does. We can send a (software generated) acknowledgement frame in less than 200 microsecond. The chip has a new revision and corrects most of the early problems of the first revision. However I did not investigate if the automatic mode would be useful. Also, the original revision does not have an automatic CRC check for the received packets in the basic mode, this is corrected in the new revision. I have observed that under very rare circumstances (in a 1 microsecond window), that the chip can get stuck between the receive state and transmit state. If you switch to PLL_ON state and a message arrives just then, then the chip does not switch to RX_BUSY but stays in PLL_ON. When I initiate the transmission with the SLP_TR pin, but then the chip does not goes to BUSY_TX but stays in PLL_ON and I suspect that the TRX_END interrupt correspond to the received message and not the transmitted message. This can be detected if you verify that the chip goes to BUSY_TX. Everything goes back to normal with the RX_ON command. > How can it be compare to TI c2420 or Freescale MC1319x? I cannot really compare. I think the programming interface of the chip is simpler than that of the CC2420. > In fact, I'm interested by all little thing you can have experienced with it > and that are not documented ;) Look at the RF230 code in the tinyos 2.x tree, you can learn stuff there, but pretty much it works as it supposed to work if you used it correctly. Miklos ___ Tinyos-help mailing list Tinyos-help@millennium.berkeley.edu https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinyos-help
Re: [Tinyos-help] Atmel RF230
Thanks for your input! When you are talking about the new chip revision, do you talk about the rf231??? Can you be more explicit about the "several errors and lack of configuration options" of the automatic modes? Thanks again, Fred -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Miklos Maroti Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 3:44 PM To: Frederic Beaulieu Cc: tinyos-help@millennium.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [Tinyos-help] Atmel RF230 Hi Fred, > I currently looking to integrate the RF230 transceiver from Atmel in one of > my design and I just wonder if someone have something to tell about it. Is > the chip follow the spec given by Atmel (sensitivity, timing, etc)? I cannot verify the sensitivity, but the published timings to control the state machine of the radio chip is correct. > Is there a lot of bugs with the chips? The basic operation mode works as advertised. The automatic mode had several errors and lack of configuration options that prevented the tinyos 2.x driver to use that mode. Nonetheless, the basic mode is perfectly appropriate to do everything at least as good as the cc2420 driver does. We can send a (software generated) acknowledgement frame in less than 200 microsecond. The chip has a new revision and corrects most of the early problems of the first revision. However I did not investigate if the automatic mode would be useful. Also, the original revision does not have an automatic CRC check for the received packets in the basic mode, this is corrected in the new revision. I have observed that under very rare circumstances (in a 1 microsecond window), that the chip can get stuck between the receive state and transmit state. If you switch to PLL_ON state and a message arrives just then, then the chip does not switch to RX_BUSY but stays in PLL_ON. When I initiate the transmission with the SLP_TR pin, but then the chip does not goes to BUSY_TX but stays in PLL_ON and I suspect that the TRX_END interrupt correspond to the received message and not the transmitted message. This can be detected if you verify that the chip goes to BUSY_TX. Everything goes back to normal with the RX_ON command. > How can it be compare to TI c2420 or Freescale MC1319x? I cannot really compare. I think the programming interface of the chip is simpler than that of the CC2420. > In fact, I'm interested by all little thing you can have experienced with it > and that are not documented ;) Look at the RF230 code in the tinyos 2.x tree, you can learn stuff there, but pretty much it works as it supposed to work if you used it correctly. Miklos ___ Tinyos-help mailing list Tinyos-help@millennium.berkeley.edu https://www.millennium.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinyos-help
