I have been tackling the issues of wireless connectivity this week. There are an amazing number of options available. 10 years ago the options were few and expensive.
Nowadays there are many different ways to tackle the issue of exchanging information without the need for electrical cabling. Zigbee has been increasingly in the news the last few years and I believe at this point most of the bugs have been sorted out and good links are achievable under most conditions. I say most because when one is involved with rf (radio frequency) communications it is still sensitive to electrical interference and many conditions can be present that will negatively affect your link. Zigbee modules are probably the safest option to choose because all the rf "black magic" has been largely sorted out by the professionals, resulting in a packaged module that needs a simple interface to operate. I will be using a module by Maxstream called the XBee.
Bluetooth is another wireless option that has been available for some time and it makes sense to use this as the final link between external instrumention and the PC. Bluetooth dongles connected to the USB port are cheap and accessible from many suppliers. This makes it easy to connect to some external instrumentation via a wireless serial link. The final task would then be to write a small application (my visual language of choice is Delphi) to make all this data available for monitoring and control.
Another means of communications is the 433MHz open frequency used by many wireless gate and garage door openers (and many other applications). This is probably the cheapest option but will require a robust protocol to handle the many noisy influences that exist in this increasingly noisy wireless world of ours.
Last and not strictly wireless is the powerline method of transferring data from one point to another without the need to add extra wiring. This has been around for many years and probably made famous by X10. Newer, faster and more robust technologies have appeared over the past decade including UPB (Universal Power Bus) and others and I am looking for some modular means to make this type of commununication easily accessible.
Marc Jarchow
46 year old entrepeneur providing MODular ElecTRONics solutions for the Professional (custom instruments for your business), Educator (can be used as a training aid), Entrepeneur (can be packaged with your logo) and Hobbyist (make your own home based products) using low cost modules to create whatever application you have in mind. This is all done via
modetron.com
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