End Device Auto Association pitfall?

XBee & XBee Gateway XBee - 802.15.4
1

I’m using auto-association so my wireless sensors can find a coordinator to upload their data to. It works great. Let’s call this project A.

Once I’ve deployed a bunch of sensors (end devices) and a bunch of coordinators to service them, I’d like to move on to another, unrelated application for XBees. Let’s call this project B.

I’m going to have a bunch of coordinators for these two entirely different projects in the same “room”. (Think humongous aircraft hangar.) The coordinators and end points from project A will use (my home grown) packet payload protocols that are incompatible with project B.

My question is this: When a sensor from project A attempts to auto associate, might it discover 5 PANS from project B, terminating active scan, causing it to associate with a coodinator from project B?

Data transfer will fail (because of the said incompatibility) and the sensor will sleep a bit and try to auto associate again.

My concern is that some sensors from project A might never discover a coordinator from project A. Is this possible?

If this can happen, what is the solution?
Should I just assign each project a unique PAN ID and force all coordinators and end points from that project to use it?

Cheers,
cesium

2

Hmmm,
That won’t work. On p.18 I read:
After applying these filters to the discovered Coordinators…
It seems that the PAN filter is applied after 5 PANs are discovered. In my case, that’s 5 PANs from project B.
cesium

3

OK,
My brain hurts.
If the coordinator performs some sort of random delay before replying to the Beacon Request, then by adjusting the Scan Duration, maybe we can create a high but non-unity probability that each coordinator will be found. Lather, rinse, repeat, and we might find our “quiet” coordinator?
A little help?
cesium