Other Parts Discussed in Thread: CC2530, Z-STACK
Hi all!
I met a TI engineer recruiting on my campus today who referred me to this forum to see if I could pick your brains about my team's senior design project. Hopefully we can get some help choosing the right solution for our project.
Our goal is to provide a solution for home owners to monitor the power usage of their "dumb" appliances and give them some more data about how they use power. We plan to embed a current sensor and solid state relay in a standard power outlet (or at least it should fit in the wall and look standard from the faceplate. The idea is to have each outlet in a mesh configuration, kicking back usage data to a networked hub. The hub (a beagleboard we had on hand, just got a netbook distro of Ubuntu running on it) hosts an online interface where the users can see their power usage and remotely control which outlets are on and off.
We would like to use 2.4 GHz ZigBee both because of the mesh and the ability to talk to smart meters and other smart appliances around the house (phase 1 is to get the sensors to work on their own, phase 2 would be to integrate data from smart meters). If we get that far, the smart meter we would demo with, Elster's REX2-EA uses the ZigBee Smart Energy profile.
So I think we are on solid ground with the current sensing and relay circuits, but we are still trying to do some due diligence on picking a microcontroller and ZigBee chip to run the sensors. We think the main choice is between a simple/low power micro we are more familiar with (such as an atmel, pic, or the MSP430) paired with a ZigBee chip, or to go with a SoC solution with ZigBee right on board with the micro (either the CC2530 or Atmel's ATmega128RF). Right now we are leaning towards the later, but they might also be overkill. We think the big advantage of the CC2530 is the included Smart Energy profile.
Are we on the right track with the CC2530? Is it total overkill and is there a simpler solution? The CC2530 looks like a great all-in-one solution for us but our main concern right now is ease of implementation. I'm assuming we be looking at getting an eval or dev kit to get things rolling, right? We have all messed with embedded hardware, but the CC2530 is admittedly a little intimidating.
Any advice, comments, input, etc. regarding chip selection, the best way to get up on our feet with a CC2530, or general questions about our project would all be greatly appreciated!
Thanks a ton!
Dreier Carr
Senior, Electrical Engineering
North Carolina State University
