Electronic – BeeStack and the Freescale MC13224

cembeddedfreescalemicrocontrollerzigbee

I've been a long term desktop application developer and now I have the need to dive into embedded. What I am looking to do is implement a Zigbee mesh network where there is one co-ordinator interfacing with 9-27 'routers'. I have looked at various chips from TI and Freescale and narrowed it down to Freescale's MC13224 and since I am a n00b, I need some expert advise.

My question is, I have read through Freescale's Zigbee toolkit called Beekit and how I can use their desktop application to configure my Zigbee chip and then import those settings to my embedded project. What I don't understand is:

1) Will the chip come with some sort of BeeStack code on it? In other words, from a software standpoint, what work will I have to do to make Zigbee work for me on that chip?

2) If anyone has worked with this or a similar chip, can you guide me on what I need to do on my main MC to interface with this chip? Do I need to write some stack implementation? Does the MC13224 provide everything on the chip and I just read/write over SPI?

I'm basically asking a starting point for implementing this Zigbee chip with a main MCU. Please make the answer as layman's terms as possible since I have been learning embedded only for 2 weeks.

Best Answer

The Microchip ZigBee PRO Stack is available for purchase from the www.microchipdirect.com website. Due to governmental security regulations regarding 128-bit encryption software, the ZigBee PRO stack is not available for download from the Microchip website.

Other companies may do the same.