- Thu Jun 27, 2013 4:16 am
#160991
I have been experimenting with my XBees, first I had the Controller XBee on a breakout connected to the Raspberry Pi, and the second connected to my Android phone with a serial adapter on a breadboard.
With this setup I was able to take the phone-connected XBee across the house, even downstairs and outside and still send and receive data.
Having been happy with this, I moved the Controller onto a Slice of Pi (http://shop.ciseco.co.uk/slice-of-pi-ad ... pberry-pi/) and my Router onto a breadboard connected to an Arduino Pro Mini using proto (jumper) wires.
With this setup, I was now getting no more than 6 feet of range! First move was to re-wire the breadboard with flat wires against the board, and I gained an extra few feet, say five or six, of range.
Can anybody make suggestions how I can find first off, identify which of the two device is having the issue, the one mounted on the Pi with Slice of Pi or the one on the breadboard (I suspect it's the breadboard one) and then how I can solve the problem that is having a HUGE effect on the range of my communications?
I read the XBee datasheet which suggested noise filter caps across the VCC and GND of the XBee of 100uF and 8.2nF. I didn't have exactly an 8.2nF but did have an 8nF so I used that (ceramic) and my electrolytic caps havn't arrived yet so I don't have the 100uF in place yet. Can I use multiples of the cap sizes? Because I do have 82nF ceramic caps.
With this setup I was able to take the phone-connected XBee across the house, even downstairs and outside and still send and receive data.
Having been happy with this, I moved the Controller onto a Slice of Pi (http://shop.ciseco.co.uk/slice-of-pi-ad ... pberry-pi/) and my Router onto a breadboard connected to an Arduino Pro Mini using proto (jumper) wires.
With this setup, I was now getting no more than 6 feet of range! First move was to re-wire the breadboard with flat wires against the board, and I gained an extra few feet, say five or six, of range.
Can anybody make suggestions how I can find first off, identify which of the two device is having the issue, the one mounted on the Pi with Slice of Pi or the one on the breadboard (I suspect it's the breadboard one) and then how I can solve the problem that is having a HUGE effect on the range of my communications?
I read the XBee datasheet which suggested noise filter caps across the VCC and GND of the XBee of 100uF and 8.2nF. I didn't have exactly an 8.2nF but did have an 8nF so I used that (ceramic) and my electrolytic caps havn't arrived yet so I don't have the 100uF in place yet. Can I use multiples of the cap sizes? Because I do have 82nF ceramic caps.