Shop OBEX P1 Docs P2 Docs Learn Events
Wireless project board sizes and prices — Parallax Forums

Wireless project board sizes and prices

rymanryman Posts: 12
edited 2013-01-18 18:51 in General Discussion
I have not posted much since getting my first Propeller BofE kit over a year ago. I wanted to learn microprocessor programming. I have C, Delphi and .Net (C#) (and of course basic) background. So on advice from a friend who was using the Parallax SX chip I came to this site and decided to give the Propeller a go. I loved working with the BofE kit and learn a great deal.

However I REALLY wanted to do a project involving wireless communications, either Bluetooth or Wifi, but the wireless starter or test kits from Parallax are out of my hobby budget. Plus the ZigBee and other wireless items on the parallax site are quite big, and coupling them with a DIP Propeller on a breadboard would make my test wireless project very big. I want to build I small test project with at minimum of 2 wireless units that can communicate with each other, preferably more.

So after learning a little about microprocessors from my very little propeller experience, I started looking for other project kits at places like sparkfun, adruino, and others and stumbled upon TI's msp430 launch pad. At 4.30 a board and $15 for a wireless test board the size of a quarter, and I could code it C, I was excited. The TI MSP430 is attractive, small and inexpensive to get started. So I order a few test kits. That was about 9 months ago.

I gave up on the msp430 cause texas instruments sample code and documentation is terrible. I could not get most the examples to work and there are limitations aplenty. However, I recently gave the msp430 another go and I am still frustrated.

So, remembering my very good experience using and learning the propeller and spin, I want to move back to trying to build my project with the parallax tools. However, I am not keen on the ZigBee line of wireless devices, because they are big and expense. I need small (smaller than a quarter) and under $20 (under 10 even better) wireless chip that I can program with the Propeller and get the project into a small project box. The goal is to make a wrist-watch sized reminder buzzer than receive radio signals for another watch wearer.

So spinners. Do you have any suggestions on a good wireless chip or test kit for the propeller that I should check out, that also has good example code and documentation.

Thanks guys,

-=Ryan

Comments

Sign In or Register to comment.