Thunderbird Radio Product Guide v0.64 (Preliminary) Bulletin #1033 For Grayhill Part Numbers: OEM RF Unit - WM09STDB-0001 CF Card – WM09STDB-0002 561 Hillgrove Avenue LaGrange, IL 60525 Phone: (708) 354-1040 Fax: (708) 354-2820 E-mail: ezcom@grayhill.com On the Internet: http://www.grayhilloem.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Copyright © 2004 Grayhill, Inc. All rights reserved. The information supplied in this manual is believed to be reliable and accurate at the time of its publication. Grayhill, Inc. assumes no responsibility for any errors, omissions, or suitability of its products for a particular application. Warranty EZCom Thunderbird radios from Grayhill, Inc.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Contents EZCom Thunderbird Introduction............................................................................................ 5 Application Use .......................................................................................................................................5 RF Module Features.................................................................................................................................
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 © 2004 Grayhill, Inc.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 EZCom Thunderbird Introduction Grayhill’s EZCom Thunderbird radio is a frequency-hopping wireless module that transfers standard asynchronous1 serial data streams over-the-air between host devices.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Electrical and Mechanical Interfaces The EZCom Thunderbird uses commonly available connectors and fasteners, and has been otherwise optimized for easy integration into other systems. Connectors and Pinouts The Thunderbird RF module incorporates two connectors: the RF connector and the main interface connector, as shown in Figure 1 below. RF Connector Main Interface Connector Figure 1.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Table 1. J2 Pin Signal Descriptions Module Pin Signal Name I/O When Active Description A1 FOUT O* Low Flow Control Out A2 Power Down I* High When driven high, module powers down.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 RF Connector Three types of RF connectors are available: • Soldered ¼ wave wire antenna • Reverse Polarity SMA (RP-SMA) • MMCX Note: Though usually installed topside, the RF connector can be installed on the underside of the module. Contact Grayhill to request this installation variation. Soldered Wire Antenna If your application is mainly short-range, a soldered wire antenna should be more than sufficient.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Antennas Several common antennas have been pre-qualified for use with the Thunderbird RF module, including a high-gain patch antenna for directional links and a high-gain, omni-directional antenna for wide-area coverage. Only Grayhill-approved antennas and cables should be used with this radio.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Mechanical Interface The Thunderbird was designed to be bolted to a host PCB and has mounting holes for #6 socket head cap screws for this purpose. You can bolt the radio board itself to a panel or fixture. If you decide to mount the RF module away from the electrical device to which it connects, plug a ribbon cable into the main interface connector to bring the signals out.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 RF Module 3-D Models To more easily integrate the data radio into other systems, 3-D images of the Thunderbird radio are provided in STEP format at www.grayhilloem.com. A sample 3-D image of the standard interface board appears in Figure 5 below. Figure 5.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Under some circumstances, the standard interface board may need to present a DTE interface – for instance, when the board will be connected to a phone line modem. To have jumper J5 select a DTE interface, shift its 2-pin shunts into vertical positions, as shown on the right in Figure 6. J5 1 1 J5 Figure 6. J5 Configured for DCE – J5 Configured for DTE Connectors and Pinouts Power Connector Each Grayhill interface board has a 2.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Interface Board 3-D Models To make it easier to integrate Grayhill WLYY4097-1 interface boards into other systems, images of the board are provided in STEP format at www.grayhilloem.com. A sample 3-D image of the standard interface board appears in Figure 8 below. Figure 8. Standard Interface Board in 3-D Serial Interface RS-232 is a single-ended, point-to-point interface, which remains the most common serial interface outside the industrial market.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Configuration The advanced addressing and communications settings offered by Thunderbird data radios are configurable using either AT command mode or binary command mode. By default, all data received on the Data In pin (Pin A4) is transmitted on the RF channel. Command modes provide ways to alert a radio that commands – instead of data intended for RF transmission – are incoming, thus allowing the user to modify various operating parameters.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Binary Commands To send a binary command, “flow control in” (FIN), i.e., Pin A5, needs to be set high by the host while the command byte is sent to the module. FIN can be set low while parameter values are sent. If all parameters are received within 0.5 seconds, the command is executed; otherwise, the radio returns to data mode, ignoring the command.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Table 4. Configuration Command Table DT 01 SM 02 ST 03 HT 04 05 06 BT AT CT 07 FL 08 WR 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E CN E0 E1 LH FH RE 0F ER 10 GD 11 HP 12 MK 13 14 CC VR 15 BD 16 RT 17 SY 18 SN Parameter Values Radio Address. In order to communicate, radios need to 0000 to FFFF (0 to 65535) have identical radio addresses. 00 – no sleep mode 02 – wake from serial RX 03 – cyclic 0.5 second sleep Sleep Mode 04 – cyclic 1.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Operation The EZCom Thunderbird radio operates in half-duplex mode – either transmitting or receiving data over the air, but not both at the same time. After transmitting RF data, the unit must transition to a standby operation before it can receive any data presented over the air waves; likewise, after receiving RF data, the radio must move to standby before it can transmit any data arriving at its serial port.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 numbers 17 and 19) over the data lines. When serial software flow control is on, if the radio receives any legitimate data byte that has the same value as one of the software flow control characters during the course of regular data transmission from the host to the radio, the radio will assume these are flow control characters, not data bytes, and transmission will stall.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Serial Receive Low-Power Mode A Thunderbird radio with Serial Receive Low-Power Mode configured as its Sleep Mode goes to sleep when no data has come in either over the air or over the serial line from its host for the timeout period specified by the ATST command. When a radio so configured sleeps, it will wake up whenever data from its host arrives at its serial port, but not when RF data is incoming over the air waves.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 receive and process every transmission, allows the design of a system that provides for all networking tasks – addressing, error checking, acknowledgements and retries – behind the radio link, as if the nodes were attached to a wired, multi-drop bus. However, the default networking setting do not provide network security.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 However, even with radios assigned different hop sequences (that is, different Radio Group parameter values), there is still the possibility that channels will overlap. In the event that transmissions from radios in different groups collide on a channel, the collision is resolved by the next hop, since transmissions from radios belonging to different groups follow different hopping sequences and will jump to separate channels.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Radio Address Masks The Radio Address Mask (RAD mask), set using ATMK or its equivalent binary command, also facilitates networking within a radio group. The RAD mask is a set to the value 0xFFFF at the factory. The RAD mask is the same length as the RAD (16 bits). During packet reception, any bits set in the RAD mask of the receiver are logically ANDed with the transmitting radio’s RAD, which was sent as part of the packet.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Figure 11. Assembled Evaluation Kit Configuring the Data Connections Note: When using a telnet program other than HyperTerminal, the instructions below can still be used as a general guide. 1. Start up HyperTerminal on each computer by selecting Start | Programs | Accessories | Communications | HyperTerminal. 2. In each computer’s Connection Description dialog box, choose a name and an icon for the test connection. 3.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Figure 13. Com Properties Dialog Box Radio-computer connections are now configured and ready for the data communications test. Testing RF Data Communications 1. Select one of the HyperTerminal windows and type a message. The text you type is immediately transferred over the air and appears only in the remote HyperTerminal window. 2. Select the other HyperTerminal window and type a message. The text you type appears only in the remote HyperTerminal window.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Troubleshooting the Evaluation Test 1. Can’t find the HyperTerminal program (or other telnet program) on your computer? • Search your hard drive for HyperTrm.exe (or the other telnet program you will use). • Go to www.hilgraeve.com for a free version of HyperTerminal. For TELIX, see www.mcc.com.au/web/telixdos.htm. For Kermit, see www.columbia.edu/kermit/. 2.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Appendix A. EZCom Thunderbird CF EZCom Thunderbird data radio functionality is also available in a Compact Flash (CF) card to facilitate networking with handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs). CF Interface The Thunderbird CF’s Compact Flash interface replaces the standard Thunderbird’s 100 mil interface header and is designed to fit standard Compact Flash I/O ports.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 9. Verify that the following Connection preferences are set: • • • • Data Bits – 8 Parity – None Stop Bits – 1 Flow Control – Hardware 10. On the bottom of the Advanced dialog under Terminal settings, select the Use terminal before connecting and the Enter dialing commands manually checkboxes. 11. Click OK. 12. In the Make New Connection dialog, select Next. 13.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Appendix B. Specifications Table 7.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Appendix C. Agency Certification The EZCom Thunderbird radio complies with Title 47, Part 15, Section 247 of the FCC Rules for radio communication devices. FCC Approved (USA) FCC IDs: Standard Thunderbird – NMAWM09STDB0001 Thunderbird CF – NMAWM09STDB0002 Devices that embed EZCom Thunderbird modules can inherit Grayhill’s FCC certification. Industry Canada Certified #: (Pending) FCC Notices Any antenna used with the radio must be greater than 20 cm.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Appendix D. Mechanical Drawings Figure 15. Thunderbird RF Module Mechanical Drawings © 2004 Grayhill, Inc.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 Figure 16. Standard Interface Board Mechanical Drawings © 2004 Grayhill, Inc.
EZCom Thunderbird Radio – Product Guide v0.64 © 2004 Grayhill, Inc.
