Posted by Jack Crossfire on February 13, 2009 at 12:30am
These are basically 300ft XBee's for $10. They have no UART, only SPI. They don't have the GPIO functions of XBee's. They're the same size as XBee's. The idea is to bring the data processing of a really powerful computer on the ground to ever smaller, cheaper aircraft with these high speed radios.MicrochipHopefully Microchip is following the Sparkfun model of selling prototyped versions of its chips & not running short batches for reference designs.
Its worth noting that the challenge of producing an RF board is less the Design/production, and far more the FCC Bull%^&t. The reason Microchip will produce this item in bulk rather than as a reference is because they alone can singularize the FCC bribing. (of course this presumes a rationale actor)
Maybe these don't suck, but for now I'm still in the "cheap serial 2.4GHz radios are more trouble than they are worth" camp. High error rates, random firmware lockups, terrible full duplex behavior, constant interference from consumer devices, etc.
That's pretty cheap. The Nordic nRF24L01 breakouts are running closer to $20, though the chip only costs $2.50. Howver, there are serial and USB versions - top speed is 2Mbps through SPI.
Have you looked at the Atmel AT86RF212 ? 900MHz radio that claims up to 1Mbps throughput. No Sparkfun boards yet.
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Have you looked at the Atmel AT86RF212 ? 900MHz radio that claims up to 1Mbps throughput. No Sparkfun boards yet.