User Manual

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Communication Parameters
There are six configuration parameters used to setup the FreeStar module
for communications, which are outline below.
1. Set PAN ID
– The Personal Area Network (PAN) ID is used to
establish networks of transceivers. Only devices with the same PAN
ID will communicate with one another.
2. Set Transceiver Addres
s – The Transceiver Address is used to
differentiate transceivers within a network. Each transceiver should
be configured with a different address. The Transceiver Address
consists of both a short two byte and a long eight byte address.
Setting the short address to 65,534 (0xFFFE) will cause the FreeStar
module to use its long address. To use the short address, the short
address should be set to between 0-65,533.
3. Set RF Channel
– The RF channel is used to select the channel in
the 2.4GHz band that the transceiver will operate on.
Communication between transceivers is only possible if the devices
are both using the same RF channel. Valid RF channels are from 11
to 26.
4. Enable/Disable Receive All RF Messages
– Enabling receive all RF
messages allows all messages on the configured PAN ID to be
received by the FreeStar module. This intended use of receive all
messages is for diagnostics tools so that it is possible to see all
messages on a network. Note that when this mode is enabled that it
is not possible to transmit RF messages.
5. Enable/Disable RF Acknowledgements and Retries
– When RF
Acknowledgements and Retries are enabled, the destination
transceiver will respond to the received message with an
acknowledgement. If the source transceiver does not receive an
acknowledgement, it will attempt to re-send the message to the
destination transceiver up to 3 more times (3 retries). By using
acknowledgments and retries, the likelihood of successfully getting a
message from one transceiver to another increases.
6. Set Transmit Power Level
– This setting allows for adjusting the
transmit power, which affects the overall range. The range varies
from 0 to 31.