Could this be used with XTension?

[Thomas Henry]

Good to know. As you said, good idea to start with one thing, and then all the ideas will start popping up.

That is one negative of the XBee on the powering of the device, but for initial experimentation, the price point for experimentation is pretty good. There are a lot of projects online for this stuff, and when I can tie it into XTension, even better.

The Vera seems the way to go for lighting and the like, but more expensive to get started.

Please keep us up-to-date on the power issues, and if you are able to find a longer battery life solution, let us know.

Tom

On Sep 12, 2014, at 9:30 AM, James Sentman <james at sentman.com> wrote:

> 
> On Sep 12, 2014, at 8:14 AM, Thomas Henry <tjhjr at mac.com> wrote:
> 
>> OK, I’m reading a lot more about the XBee, and I’m liking it more. ;). I also need to be mindful that when I tie these into XTension, I can only use V2.X.
> 
> If you're using an ancient XTension build then yes, you'll need to upgrade ;)
> 
>> 
>> Question; what are yo using to power them? I’ve seen batteries are an option, but if they are “on” all the time, the battery life is pretty short.
> 
> I've been experimenting with xBee's on batteries. They have wonderful sleep modes that can wake up, send the data reading and go back to sleep. But they are really built for very short sleeping, less than 20 seconds or so. If you let them wake up within that time then they are still on the network and can send in data in just a few ms. If you try to stretch it out longer then they have to wake up for a lot longer and re-join the network which can take several seconds. So there is a tradeoff for longer sleep times vs longer running times for batteries. This interval can be changed for the network as a whole too to extend it a bit but I haven't gotten around to testing with that yet. My experiments with some temp sensors here and the 2AA batteries are lasting just about 2 months rather than the 2 years they should, but when I get the intervals worked out I expect it to be much better. Still not ever going to be as good as an Oregon sensor or an X10 motion sensor.
> 
> For any unit that can be powered it should be powered because then it can become a routing node and extend the reach and reliability of your network as a whole. 
> 
> There is no good way to make an xBee on a battery into something like a door or contact sensor nor a motion sensor without adding quite a bit of external electronics. Someday I will do this but for now without an arduino or something else driving it you're limited to using powered versions for that. 
> 
> Thanks,
> 	James
> 
> 
> James Sentman                       http://sentman.com		http://MacHomeAutomation.com
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> XTensionList mailing list
> XTensionList at shed.com
> http://shed.com/mailman/listinfo/xtensionlist