Nuts & Volts
Nuts & Volts
Nuts & Volts
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PERSONAL ROBOTICS<br />
RESOURCES<br />
■ The Panasonic Zigbee Comm<br />
Module is available from: www.pana<br />
sonic.com/industrial/components/mo<br />
dules/mod_rfm.htm<br />
■ PHOTO 2<br />
■ The Freescale Sard board is<br />
available from: www.freescale.com/<br />
webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?<br />
code=ZRP-1&nodeId=01J4Fs25657103<br />
■ The limited, but very functional<br />
Freescale metrowerks development<br />
software may be downloaded free<br />
of charge from: www.freescale.com/<br />
webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?nodeId<br />
=01272694011135<br />
■ General Zigbee resources:<br />
http://zigbee.org/en/index.asp or<br />
www.ieee802.org/15/pub/TG4.html<br />
Zigbee is relatively cheap and,<br />
although production and use has by no<br />
means reached maturity yet, a node<br />
from Panasonic costs about $25 and<br />
will most likely be cheaper in the<br />
future. A node is also of a size which<br />
will fit into most small robots, for<br />
example, the Panasonic Node is 1.9<br />
inches by 1.4 inches (see Photo 1).<br />
There are currently several manufacturers<br />
producing Zigbee chips,<br />
boards, and development kits. In Parts<br />
2 and 3 of Zen and the Art of Zigbee, we<br />
will look at the Panasonic Zigbee<br />
Comm Module, the Freescale Sard<br />
(Sensor Application Reference Design)<br />
boards (see Photo 2), and the Freescale<br />
MetroWerks development software.<br />
I thought I would end Part 1 with<br />
a few thoughts to start you thinking<br />
about some of the cool things you<br />
might do with Zigbee. If you look<br />
closely at Figure 3, you will see that<br />
some of the FFD Zigbee devices have<br />
robots associated with them. There is<br />
no reason why you can’t have a router<br />
passing messages and also consuming<br />
messages to control a robot. RFD<br />
devices can only talk to FFD, however,<br />
since FFD devices can talk with other<br />
FFD devices, you can have your robots<br />
send messages to each other.<br />
How cool is that!?! All your robots<br />
can chat with each other, perhaps<br />
send “come over here” messages or<br />
“danger, danger stay away” messages.<br />
Next month, we will show a<br />
practical application of a peer-to-peer<br />
topology network along with some<br />
real world software which will allow<br />
some simple commands to be sent to<br />
a robot and status to be received.<br />
We’ll also discuss and demonstrate<br />
the physical connection too, along<br />
with the development environment<br />
and a simple application. Hopefully,<br />
this will be enough to get you started<br />
with your own project.<br />
Bear in mind that this article<br />
sketches the functionality and<br />
capabilities of Zigbee and for greater<br />
in-depth knowledge, you should<br />
spend some time reading through the<br />
Zigbee resources you will find on the<br />
Internet. NV<br />
April 2006 83
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