RoadTest: Anaren AIR CC2530 BoosterPack Kit
Author: shobhitkukreti
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?: Some custom 802.15.4 radio modules
What were the biggest problems encountered?: Switching the RX and TX lines. It becomes bigger hassle if your launchpad version is pre v1.5.
Detailed Review:
Review:
It is my first road test and I would like to thanks both Element14 and Anaren Inc to give me chance to review the board. I am working with sensor modules with 802.15.4 radios and wanted to evalute TI based MSP430 modules for direct replacement since the Anaren board already has a couple of sensors. I also wanted to hack the Philips Hue Zigbee modules and these anaren boards should do the trick.
I have two MSP430 launchpads and two Stellaris based boards. One MSP430 board is anolder version and required cross swapping of RX/TX lines. I did not have the required jumper so I just used the Stellaris based launchpads.
The modules were neatly packed in small cases and it also included compartment to keep the regular DIP MSP430 which you would take out of the Anaren module. It also contained a battery module to power the end point device. However there were no batteries. I powered all three over USB. The kit gives you an almost out of the box experience. Quickly flashing the provided stellaris firmware, I was able to set up the ZIGBEE mesh network. The serial terminal was flooded with the temperature and color sensor data. I opened three serial terminals to check the data for the Router,Coordinator and the Endpoint Device. One neat thing were the stickers placed on the modules identifiying themselvers.
Steps:
1)The MSP430 microcontroller need to be remvoed from the modules which were fit on the Stellaris launchpad and flash them with the firmware. This requires TI LM flash programmer. The quick start guide aptly mentions this.
2)The MSP430 launchpad need not have the microcontroller on it. I was initially wondering if somehow both the microcontroller on anaren module and launchpad could talk over SPI and the launchpad microcontroller I/Os
could be used for other purpose. I still need to verify it.
Although running the demo was easy, it was the integration of the plenty of files to start a project in CCS which seemed daunting. Since I had the stellaris boards, I wanted to program them using the library provided in the firmware. Plenty of linker error meant I had to include the required header files from the HAL directory. So after adding the needed include files and adding the symbol for the launchpad in the project properties, I am currently stuck with the register names which are not identified. I am flummoxed since even the MSP430 device header file is included and my older project is still running fine.
I will post more, with screenshots of the serial terminals and additional work I get to do on this.
Update: The sample code is really consfusing. There are functions called which are nowhere to be found in any header files included. I contacted Anaren Support. Waiting for their reply.
