need transeivers for system development

[T. Rooks]

Hello,

Please be gentle. This is my first time;) .

I am a retired computer/medical electronics/electromechanical device field engineer.

A friend got me interested in developing an idea he had. It involves having various separate units performing precise high speed operations in a time and security critical network.

I have developed several modules and have them working as intended in a 'hard wired' ring topology configuration. What I now need is to get them converted to wireless using as small packages as possible to get no less than 100 meters range in the outdoors. They must also have an operating temperature range of -50 to +85 C. They will spend most of the time waiting for very short transmissions and will respond with very short transmissions.

I am prepared to develop my own protocols for them to sync up and accept commands/data to and from each other as I already have a rudimentary system doing that task. However I would not mind modules that have embedded 16/32 bit processors if I can get documentation and be able to use Basic or C programming and if it can add an extra level of security with minimal time overhead.

Any and all recommendations, suggestions or ideas will be greatly appreciated and acknowledged.

Thanking all in advance for your help,

Tim

[Ole Morten]

Your temperature requirements are pretty wide, and I actually don't think any of our current chips go from -50 to +85 degrees Celsius. The nRF24L01+ comes close at -40 to +85, but that's about it.

However, if you can limit your temperature range to -25 to +75 degrees Celsius, I'd recommend you to look at the nRF51822, which is an improved nRF24L01+ radio plus an ARM Cortex M0 MCU, giving a single-chip solution. The product specification is available here.

If -25 to +75 degrees is too little, but -40 to +85 is sufficient, the nRF24L01+ is our other option. The official specification is here (the one Brian linked to is an old, out-dated version), and as you can see this is a pure transceiver chip, that can be used from any microcontroller with an SPI interface. This has a slightly more limited radio, but should still be usable for your application.