Posted by Paul Thompson on October 5, 2009 at 4:20am
Just wondering what sort of realistic range one can expect from the 2.5Ghz modules. Also how well can the range be extended with a directional antenna?Cheers
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I made a couple 2.4s talk to each other last week and I followed these instructions http://www.humboldt.edu/~cm19/XBee%20setup.pdf It was not too bad. I have a pair of xbee breakout boards, one with a usb connector and one without. So it was a matter of sorting out one at a time.
Doing a walk down the road test I achieved 300m range using two 5db whips, that was between houses.
I am hoping for 500m out of them, in flight. That will be good enough for my needs at the moment, any more than that must mean you are flying outside of VLOS which of course is not permitted ;-)
My next acquisition will be a pair of maxstreams to sit in a Millswood Failsafe these should have a bit more clout.
You might want to consider the fact that the Xbee Series 2.5 modules are designed to work as a mesh and not point to point like the 900 MHz modules. That means that one module must be programmed as a coordinator and the other as a router/end user. Make sure that you are comfortable programming the Series 2.5 before making a purchase.
Replies
Doing a walk down the road test I achieved 300m range using two 5db whips, that was between houses.
I am hoping for 500m out of them, in flight. That will be good enough for my needs at the moment, any more than that must mean you are flying outside of VLOS which of course is not permitted ;-)
My next acquisition will be a pair of maxstreams to sit in a Millswood Failsafe these should have a bit more clout.
You might want to consider the fact that the Xbee Series 2.5 modules are designed to work as a mesh and not point to point like the 900 MHz modules. That means that one module must be programmed as a coordinator and the other as a router/end user. Make sure that you are comfortable programming the Series 2.5 before making a purchase.
Just a thought.
Regards,
TCIII