RoadTest: Anaren AIR CC2530 BoosterPack Kit
Author: zrasmussen
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Independent Products
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?:
What were the biggest problems encountered?:
Detailed Review:
I received the kit and immediately jumped in to checking it out.
Just for a reference I use Gentoo Linux with GCC and Make to develop for the Stellaris Launchpads.
Hardware:
The kit contains 3 booster boards that each have a T.I. CC2530 transceiver, an IR temperature sensor, RGB color sensor, current sensor, and an RGB LED on them. The reason they include 3 boards is to support the common network configurations. The board’s construction and quality is excellent.
This kit also include a battery pack that plugs into any of the boards. This battery pack is included with the thought that you may use it with a reduced functionality end node, but it can be used with any node.
Resources:
All the resources are included on a quick start 1 page double sided pamphlet, and an included cd. The cd contains the firmware for the demo, example code, libraries, and documentation.
Software:
The cd contains a source for quite a few simple examples. The source is a great resource for getting started. I would have liked it to include the source for the demo program to give a larger example to pull from.
There are some bugs in the code that are only apparent if building on a case sensitive file system. They are easy to fix but I was not expecting that from a professional product.
Also as a side note: The source is only setup to be used in CCS or IAR, but I had no problem getting it to compile with GCC.
Conclusion:
The kit is great to get you working with zigbee and the T.I. CC2530 module fast.
The included sensors are nice to experiment with, and the code for them is included.
Any problems including the bugs were easy to overcome.
The only thing that would make me think twice before buying this kit is the cost.
