DigiMesh sleep mode - can it miss a few cycles?

Hello everyone,

I have recently purchase a few XBee Pro units (Series 1) and I would like to upgrade them to the DigiMesh firmware. But I’m a bit confused when it comes to the synchronized sleep of the DigiMesh nodes.

The question is: will a node stay awake for as long as it needs to while there is activity on the network (if it needs to send, receive or route data)? Or is the sleep cycle enforced (meaning that the node will go to sleep after the wake interval, regardless of activity)?

If I understand it correctly, in the indirect messaging mode (in non-DigiMesh firmwares), the sleep timer is reset every time data is sent or received, so the unit will only go sleep when it’s idle.

Has anyone tried this?

Thank you,
Razvan

And apparently I have answered my own question. The answer is NO, the nodes seem to wake up and go back to sleep at exactly the right time, regardless of traffic.

This is different from the indirect messaging setup in non-DigiMesh firmwares, where any communication (except broadcasts) extends the time the device stays awake. Another big difference is that the modules will wake up and stay up even if there’s no traffic. In indirect messaging, the device stays up only for 30ms, enough to poll the coordinator for any new messages.

This is a major problem in my opinion but I’m not sure if it’s not a side effect of the mesh topology and routing. An official answer from Digi would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Razvan