Hi, I have bought three Conbee2 sticks to make a coordinated fleet of drones. I have three raspberry pi’s with a simulated drone. Now I want the pis to be able to talk to each other . For example pi A want to send its coordinates to pi B. Is this possible? How should I code this? I searched for a python library but it is not well documented for the conbee2. Now I am using GitHub - Mr-Markus/ZigbeeNet: A .NET Standard library for working with ZigBee , but I do not understand how to make it possible to let them communicate.
Thanks in advance!
Hello, There is lot of thing I don’t understand, but the first one, your drones are working using Zigbee ?
And the deconz plugin use REST request, so easier to code a custom application.
Tricky, to be honest I don’t think Zigbee is the right technology for this.
It is possible to configure the three ConBees as routers with static addresses and fixed settings so they can send to each other (this could be done once as setup via deCONZ UI). And then talk to the firmware via binary serial protocol, here only APS request, confirm and indication commands need to be implemented.
BUT
Assuming the drones move fast and not in formation the topology may change quite often and mesh networking makes more trouble here with constant readjustment of the routes (exept than using broadcasts but these have other drawbacks). The stock firmware is using full Zigbee stack (MAC, NWK and APS layers) with routing, for drones it would be better to only use the lower MAC layer. A few years back I had a project with ca 50 construction vehicles via Zigbee and the routing really isn’t made for constant moving setups, took months of custom firmware writing to be usable.
The range is quite limited, in open space you get like 200 meters in good conditions, the radio supports way more but is throttled due legal reasons.
Instead of Zigbee I’d recommend looking into Lora radios. The data rate is very limited but you can reach 2 km in urban areas and 8 km in open range easily and send location reports every few seconds. With no mesh network at all just plain p2p. If you use LoraWAN on top of that they can even repeat via Internet.
I’m currently experimenting with Heltec CubeCell V2 boards and get 2 km range within the city even with many house blocks in between. Test software sends a 8 byte packet every 5 seconds.
Thanks for the info, we chose to use zigbee. Because it was mentioned in a few papers. The drones always move together, so the range would not be an issue. We also researched Lora, but some colleagues from other universities had issues with the communication when the devices where to close to each other. Can you give me more insights on how this should be done “talk to the firmware via binary serial protocol, here only APS request, confirm and indication commands need to be implemented.”? We are considering to switch to xbee devices to form a meshnetwork.
Actually I just want to send a “hello world message” from one conbee devices to the other. The router functionality is very glitchy and I do not find any decent library that supports this functionality. Do you have some tips?