ZigBee Network Control

[MichaelB.Miner]

Hello All,

I was looking at the Digi XBee3 modules for a ZigBee project I am working on. What is great is they allow you to write MicroPython code to control the network. A user can write SPI commands to the device and have them broadcast to the larger network. This allows a user to interface with some other communication protocol such as BACnet. 

I see that this Nordic device has GPIO as well as SPI and I2C. I have one attached to a ENW89854AWKF evaluation board. What I am confused with in the Nordic Thread and ZigBee SDK am I programming the Nordic module or am I programming the evaluation board? Am I able to write all of my code for SPI, I2C and ZigBee comms onto the Nordic board directly? 

Can someone clarify, using this board and I programming the Nordic module directly?

[MichaelB.Miner]

I have a few more questions. Does Nordic have some sort of front end available to users to view/make changes to the network?

[Marte Myrvold]

Hi,

I do not have any experience with that evaluation kit, but I looked up the datasheet for the PAN1780, and from what I can tell it should be no different from programming the nRF52840. The datasheet use the precompiled hex files and the SES projects for the nRF52840 as they are, without changing anything. However, I would recommend looking up the datasheet of the module yourself, as it explains how to program it. Be aware that not all revisions of the datasheet has this section (I found a rev 0.4 which did not, but both rev 1.1 and rev 1.2 contained information about this).

As for your second question, we do not have any applications for getting a visual overview of the network, or to make changes to it. In order to get an overview of the network you must use the devices neighbor tables, and to make changes you must use Zigbee commands.

Best regards,

Marte