Wireless communication gear.

[toalan]

In case anyone is interested I recently purchased some cheap wireless modules for wireless communication and was able to use it with the pic to send info to each other.

I believe the transmitter is 5 bucks and the reciever is 8 bucks. they are from www.laipac.com. It is the 388-440 Mhz stuff. It says that they are good for about 200 meters and up to 4.8 kbp/s, i was only able to get it up 1200 baud. Not bad for such cheap units. I am not plugging this company, I have been looking around a long time for cheap wireless modules and i think alot of people would have interest in them. I have alo used "Ming" tx/rx modules before, but I think these are slightly cheaper and can offer more throughput.

I also purchased their 2.4Ghz transcievers for 19 bucks each, supposedly they can do about 250 meters at upto 1Meg/s. They seem pretty neat, I think you can use the I2C function from PBP to read and write data to them. they also got 128 selectable channels. I have not used them yet, but i have studied the datasheets, I think if these work like they are supposed to they will kick ass. Oh yeah they have very low power consumption, good for mobile apps where battery life is a concern. They do not have the datasheet for these online, you gotta contact them and they will send it to you.These were the cheapest 2.4ghz modules I could find anywhere.

regards,

Alan To

[mister_e]

Yep, i mostely use their stuff. LAIPAC do also some GPS stuff. Prices are good, product are good, service is... close to be good too.

Some LINXS module are great too, a bit more expensive but are also great. Available from Digikey and many other place. LAIPAC stuff... on LAIPAC website only. Well they probably don't built those stuff themself anyway, just a distributor like others IMHO. BUT i really suggest them to everybody here who want to buy cheap and great RF modules.

cheers!

[toalan]

I was intially under the impression that they do the design themselves, because they have 50 employess and offices in toronto canada and in eroupe. Since I am in toronto I picked the stuff up form their office and I did not get the impression they have the capacity to design anything. If you guys order anything, make sure you know exactly what to order, the sales guys know squat, they will just say yes to everything.

Also their datasheets are just 1 page, it acutally reminds me of the labs reports I used to do, full of spelling errors and only talk about the obvious.

This company is definitely oinly for those who know exactly what they want.

If they just resell stuff then I wonder why they have 50 employess, maybe their offices in Europe do the design and the toronto office is in charge of proofreading their datasheets.

[scottl]

Toalan,

Have you had time to work with the Laipac 2.4Ghz modules? I have been having some problems getting them to work. I use PBP and have been trying to use the SHIFTIN and SHIFTOUT PBP functions.

Have you had any luck with I2C?

Can you let me know what functions you used? I2C, SPI, SHIFTIN/SHIFTOUT

Thanks in advance, Scott

[toalan]

Sorry I have not had the time to play with them yet, it will be a few months until I will play with them. If you make any progress please keep me posted.

[Ron Marcus]

Sparkfun.com sells alot of the Laipac products, along with the mating connectors(important). THe RF-24 G is a shiftin protocol MSB first. There are some examples on the Sparkfun for using a PIC. The units work, but at 2.4 gig, they do not penetrate walls well. I guess there is a 900 MHz version that will get far superior range. Hope this helps...

Ron