Activity 6: Wireless Sensor Networks
Hey Guys, Welcome back to our Blog. This Week we got a 3 course introduction meal to Zigbee. What is Zigbee you ask? Well Zigbee is basically a Wireless Network that allows Devices to "talk" to each other. It can be used to create smart environments with sensors, that feeds information to a main coordinator. For our activity we used 2 Xbee module to communicate with each other. Xbee is an interchangeable module by Zigbee with an antenna to transmit signals. You can slap it on to any device with either an USB adapter called a XBee Explorer Dongle or a RX/TX adapter called a XBee Explorer Reguated for micro controllers in our case an Arduino. Enjoy your meal, Bon Appetit !
The first Course: Hors D'voure (the starter)
Our very first task is to establish a connection within our group. In order to do this we first need to know the serial numbers for both modules. We connected our Xbee to the XBee Explorer Dongle and hooked it up to our computer. Then we had to open up our pre-downloaded XCTU on our computer. Our group faced a few problems in this part. Our first problem was our computer couldn't find the Xbee. In order to solve this problem we had to try all the USB ports on our computer. Then we had to copy down both modules serial high and serial low number and register them in the other one. Our group modules couldn't link with each other as we forgot to press Write in order to save the serial numbers into each module.
Our very first task is to establish a connection within our group. In order to do this we first need to know the serial numbers for both modules. We connected our Xbee to the XBee Explorer Dongle and hooked it up to our computer. Then we had to open up our pre-downloaded XCTU on our computer. Our group faced a few problems in this part. Our first problem was our computer couldn't find the Xbee. In order to solve this problem we had to try all the USB ports on our computer. Then we had to copy down both modules serial high and serial low number and register them in the other one. Our group modules couldn't link with each other as we forgot to press Write in order to save the serial numbers into each module.
Registering the Serial Numbers
Once we had establish a connection we had connect a circuit to the Arduino and code the Arduino such that when it received an 'a' form our computer it would light up a LED and turn off the LED when it received a 'b'.
Circiut Connection
The second course: The Main Dish
The next thing we need to do was to communicate with another group. To do this we had to get their serial number and give them ours to link up the modules.
Hard at Work Connecting and Writing the Other Group Serial Numbers
One group had to connect a "Switch" circuit and acted as a switch to on the other group "buzzer" circuit.
Switch Circuit
Buzzer Circuit
The last course: The Dessert :D
The last thing we had to do was to send data to our lecturer. Basically we had to combine our sensor code from our week 1 with the code that sends the data. Unfortunately we all had a problem and couldn't send the data properly over.
Ok guys this brings us to the end of our activity. We hoped you enjoyed this meal as much as we did. See you next week !
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