Hi all, a bit of a newbie here so hoping someone can help me out. I have a Xbee Series 1 link between a motor and a handheld controller, becasue the motor has a metal case I used a Xbee with a U.FL connector and an external aerial. When the lid is on the casing i’m experiencing signal drop out causing the motor to jitter. I know I can tweak the timing on the chip to reduce this jitter but thought it was weird that things work fine when the case is off but I get jitters when it’s on since I’m using an external aerial. My thoughts now are to change the timeout value or try adding a small piece of foil over the Xbee to add a bit of rf shielding, does anyone have any suggestions?
Hi Germaine
If your foil is of metal as well then it will not work.
It seems that your antenna is very close to motor’s metal case and is inside the fresnel zone. If you can keep it away from metal case or place a non-metallic object like wood in between, then I guess it should work fine then.
Thanks for your response, I’ve only just seeen it now. Unfortunately I can’t move the anteanna any further away, it needs to remain on the body of the motor. If i understand correctly though, are you suggesting putting some wood on the outside of the metal motor to try and prevent the reflections?
I should also mention that the case lid exposes the xbee and circuit board which is close to a onboard transformer, however the aerial is on a differnet face of the motor body.