Program to use for Zigbee in Iter vehicle communication?

Question

I am trying to use zigbee protocol , to establish a communication between two vehicles as a part of Inter vehicle communication as in VANET. So , as i am very new to this I am wondering that :

a. Do i have to program my Zigbee interface to establish the communication? b. Is it possible to program a zigbee interface? c. Can anyone give me a general idea of how to establish (using programming language) communication between two zigbees.?

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

a. To establish a connection and doing simple sending / receiving data (between 2 interface / module), you don't need to program your ZigBee interface (for example XBee). Just configure them with XCTU. But, if you want to make them to communicate to each other as you like (with your own rule), you have to program them.

b. If you have XBee module(s), then you can use xbee-api which is based on Java. For other module, please take a look to your module's documentation.

c. This sample is taken from xbee-api web page (sample code), which is using Java Programming language. What this code doing is searching all nearby module(s) (node discovering):

/**
 * Copyright (c) 2008 Andrew Rapp. All rights reserved.
 *  
 * This file is part of XBee-API.
 *  
 * XBee-API is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 *  
 * XBee-API is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 *  
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with XBee-API.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 */

package com.rapplogic.xbee.examples.zigbee;

import java.util.List;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.PropertyConfigurator;

import com.rapplogic.xbee.api.ApiId;
import com.rapplogic.xbee.api.AtCommand;
import com.rapplogic.xbee.api.AtCommandResponse;
import com.rapplogic.xbee.api.PacketListener;
import com.rapplogic.xbee.api.XBee;
import com.rapplogic.xbee.api.XBeeException;
import com.rapplogic.xbee.api.XBeeResponse;
import com.rapplogic.xbee.api.zigbee.ZBNodeDiscover;
import com.rapplogic.xbee.util.ByteUtils;

/**
 * Example of performing a node discover for Series 2 XBees.
 * You must connect to the coordinator to run this example and
 * have one or more end device/routers that are associated.
 *
 * @author andrew
 *
 */
public class ZBNodeDiscoverExample {

        private final static Logger log = Logger.getLogger(ZBNodeDiscoverExample.class);

        private XBee xbee = new XBee();

        public ZBNodeDiscoverExample() throws XBeeException, InterruptedException {

                try {
                        // replace with your serial port
                        xbee.open("/dev/tty.usbserial-A6005v5M", 9600);


                        // get the Node discovery timeout
                        xbee.sendAsynchronous(new AtCommand("NT"));
                        AtCommandResponse nodeTimeout = (AtCommandResponse) xbee.getResponse();

                        // default is 6 seconds
                        int nodeDiscoveryTimeout = ByteUtils.convertMultiByteToInt(nodeTimeout.getValue()) * 100;                      
                        log.info("Node discovery timeout is " + nodeDiscoveryTimeout + " milliseconds");

                        log.info("Sending Node Discover command");
                        xbee.sendAsynchronous(new AtCommand("ND"));

                        // NOTE: increase NT if you are not seeing all your nodes reported

                        List<? extends XBeeResponse> responses = xbee.collectResponses(nodeDiscoveryTimeout);

                        log.info("Time is up!  You should have heard back from all nodes by now.  If not make sure all nodes are associated and/or try increasing the node timeout (NT)");

                        for (XBeeResponse response : responses) {
                                if (response instanceof AtCommandResponse) {
                                        AtCommandResponse atResponse = (AtCommandResponse) response;

                                        if (atResponse.getCommand().equals("ND") && atResponse.getValue() != null && atResponse.getValue().length > 0) {
                                                ZBNodeDiscover nd = ZBNodeDiscover.parse((AtCommandResponse)response);
                                                log.info("Node Discover is " + nd);                                                    
                                        }
                                }
                        }
                } finally {
                        xbee.close();
                }
        }

        public static void main(String[] args) throws XBeeException, InterruptedException {
                PropertyConfigurator.configure("log4j.properties");
                new ZBNodeDiscoverExample();
        }
}