RonnyM wrote:Nice boards! Is the one on the right the actual finished unit? What kind of range are you getting with varying data rates? What is the app?
Yes - that is a finished item - the application is very lightweight indoor flying vehicles of various sorts. It has the radio, an MCU (C8051F316), 2 h bridges, 1 motor driver, and a voltage regulator. Pads for connecting another h bridge, 2 more motor drivers or telemetry inputs. They weigh less than 0.6 grams. More pics :
Closeup and
Development.
The other board is just the radio and RF section in a convenient format for breadboarding - ultimately, it will mount on a handset board that I am still laying out.
Range - very informally, 30 metres or so (IIRC, also, 250kbps), When I have a reasonably standalone setup, I will head for the park and do some better tests. I only really need ~10kbps to get the job done, so I hope to gain some range there.
RonnyM wrote:If only there was a hardware level retransmit on packet failure.
Hmm - I don't do any retransmission at the moment - out of date control positions are not useful. If I was going to, for things like telemetry, then I would prefer to do it in software - in my case, the retransmission should take advantage of freq. hopping (to work around multipath fade).
However, I would image that application specific masked ROM versions of the MCU parts, (CC2510/1110) could be offered that implemented reliable streamed comms (eg: pretending to be a UART at each end) (USB? SPDIF?) - a bit like the FTDI parts.
RonnyM wrote:Also found out my bench supply spikes much higher when being turned on and off.
I don't see a suitable 'Cringe' smiley - ouch! What is your application?
TTFN
SamL