I’m a noob that just bought the Zigbee app kit and am having loads of fun!
I’ve done all the demo stuff and have the modems seeing echother, tcp/ip through ethernet cable etc, but I’m missing something basic here. Either it’s stupidly obvious or seriously complicated, but what I want to do is connect the one Zigbee module to my PC serial port and the other to the RCM3720 and browse the web server on the rabitcore from my PC.
How do I set up XP to see the modem and what protocol do I run over the connection once it’s going? How do I set up TCP/IP on the core to ‘listen’ for conenctions on the modem etc etc etc…
I must apologise if I’m wasting anyones time here, but I’ve checked all the docs I can find and am none the wiser. (dont laugh) If anyone can just point me in the right (rtfm) direction I’d be very greatful.
Kind Regards
Stephan
Routing IP messages over Zigbee is not really supported. You could write some software to do it but why? A Zigbee connection is not a high bandwidth connection, and not well suited to carry website traffic, unless it’s your goal to have the slowest site on the internet. It can be used well behind a website though.
Let me give an example. Say you wanted a wireless weather station you could put on your roof with no wiring. You add batteries and a solar panel so it can run self-sufficiently, but want to get the results wirelessly. So you put a Rabbit core and X-bee module in the weather station and code the Rabbit to take the various readings and convert them to meaningful units of measure. Then you take a second Rabbit core with ethernet port and tie it to an X-bee module and create the wireless link to your weather station through the X-bee module. Now the second core can easily run the website and retrieve the current weather reading by talking to the weather station over Zigbee. This is more the type of connection Zigbee was designed for. It is meant to be a lower speed, lower cost data collection and control network which can do things like go to sleep (which is very difficult for a web server to do).
Hope this gives you a better perspective on how to use your new toy.
Good luck with your projects!
Many thanx for the response.
I’ve been reading a lot and messing with the Xbee’s and have realised that I’m trying to do this ass-about-face. I discovered the A/D converters and serial I/O channels on the Xbee so it would make much more sense to have the Core module inside connected to the internet via Ethernet and use the Xbee module on the roof to collect data and wake up every now and then to post it back to the Core to be processed and hosted on the web server.
Are the xbee modules sufficient to collect the data for a small weather station on their own or would you need another core module for that?
Kind Regards
Stephan