I purchased the XBee3 Zigbee development kit and I was very impressed by the quality of it. However I am having some second thoughts whether I made the right choice for my project or not.
I am developing a small sensor hub that will be connected to 3~4 environmental sensors and live outdoors (under cover). I absolutely love the idea of using micropython and was a big factor in choosing the XBee3 kit. And also because I am familiar with the Zigbee protocol and have previously used XBee2 modules.
However, I have 3 critical requirements for the prototype:
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Battery life. The hub should be able to operate for at least 12 months in what I call “sensor fusion” mode. i.e the hub will be awaken once every hour for at most 5 seconds, the time to capture one sample for each sensor and then send the data to the coordinator. I am planning on powering the hub with a single CR2777 3v battery.
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Range is important, I want to make sure data can be sent to a router or a coordinator located around 1000m away.
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Rapid prototyping: being a software engineer by trade I want to be able to program a small application to collect the data, store it locally and present it on a web page or a display. I am very comfortable with python, java or C++
I would like to know if the XBee3 Zigbee is suitable for such project or if I should opt for an XBee SX.
I am not sure the XBee SX is as easy to work with in term of programming since I don’t think it support micropython, I am also not sure about how easy the SDK is to be used with an XBee
Thanks in advance for any help.
Amir.