RIOT OS 900MHz 802.15.4 platform

802.15.4 radios running at 2.4GHz seem to work for only short distances in wild locations with trees in the way, so I'd like to make an inexpensive platform for 900MHz/868MHz bands. The mulle platform docs say it is incomplete here: https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/wiki/Board%3A-Mulle

Are any of the other 2.4GHz ARM platforms easy to change to a 900MHz radio such as AT86RF212b? What other 900MHz radios should I consider? The ST spirit radio has a contiki driver, but no riot-os. Is anyone using the NXP/Freescale MKW01 MCU-radio chip?

I have used the Semtech SX127x chip that has the proprietary LoRa chirp spread spectrum modulation (in addition to a few other common modulations, such as FSK). There are plenty of affordable eval boards, such as this: https://www.tindie.com/products/DORJI_COM/868mhz-915mhz-sx1276-data-radio-modem-drf1276dm/ (Search for other LoRa products, there are eval boards in Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Xbee form factors)

The chip has a 256 byte buffer which accommodates 802.15.4, but has no 802.15.4-specific features such as PAN filtering to reduce CPU load. The chip also has poor timing control of the radio… it’s hard to start a transmission with microsecond control like you can with some TI radios. So it isn’t exactly suitable for a protocol with tight timing control.

!!Dean

Thanks for pointing that chip out.

The CC1310 MCU+radio seems great for longer range with 40kbps data throughput, and has a relatively short lock time for changing frequencies, so hopping modes should be efficient power wise. Some mention of porting CC1310 has been made here.

Any more progress running riot-os on CC1310?

CC1120 would be a good choice - although the TI dev boards are the only simple way to prototype http://www.ti.com/tool/cc1120emk-868-915 we have used them with contiki-6LowPAN over 1km distances :wink: Cheers Kirk