Base to multiple remotes

Support Wixel
1

I read through some of the other posts and it sounds like you can control the Wixel channel frequency but I wanted to make sure before I move forward with my project. I plan to connect one wixel to a microcontroller (Propeller) using serial transmission to broadcast out the Radio Device. I would like to set up several “remote” Wixels to listen to the Radio channel and transmit commands to attached devices through either I2C or SPI. Selection of the remote would be via the selected Radio Channel on the base Wixel. The remotes could easily be setup using the configuration utility. I see one app already is available for I2C so that each remote could be preloaded with that a unique frequency.
That leaves the microcontroller to select a channel for the base wixel to select which remote to talk to. So the question is can the microcontroller select the channel frequency “on the fly” and what kind of time frame is required to change from 1 freq to another as that will affect my response time to each remote. I do understand that a “canned” app will not be available but want to make sure it is possible/capable before I research writting my own.

The combination of a radio device with built in microcontroller looks perfect for my project. Thanks for any advice.

2

Hello.

Currently two-way one-to-many communication and frequency changing is not supported by the Wixel SDK. It should be possible though. Jim Remington made a Spectrum Analyzer app, that changes its channel frequency. Take a look at that to see if it is helpful to you, and if you have specific questions, please ask them and we will try to help.

Unfortunately, I do not know how long it takes the Wixel to change channels, David will be back on Tuesday, and he would have a better idea.

- Ryan

3

Hello.

The CC2511 (the microcontroller on the Wixel) only takes about 800 microseconds to change frequencies, and it could take less time if you stored frequency synthesizer calibration values in memory so it doesn’t need to be recalibrated every time you switch channels.

–David