Radio capabilities?

[maholli]

From @ecburns33 in #2:

I've been working through the various demos on the Notion website, but I can't get the board to communicate to itself via the radio. We have an antenna attached and I changed the beacon.py code to reflect this. Following along with the code, I can see in the serial output where the board attempts to send a signal, but nothing is received. Interestingly, we have another board, and both are able to communicate with each other (as in they can pick up the beacons from the other board), but both are unable to transmit and receive just by themselves. Put simply, the boards can communicate with each other but cannot communicate to themselves. Does anyone know why this might be?

[maholli]

Thanks for posting your question! You rock.

So if I understand you correctly, you have two pycubed boards talking to each other but you're unable to get a single board to communicate with itself over the radio.

Answer

Your code and boards are working fine 🙂 a single radio will never be able to "talk" (transmit) while simultaneously "listening" (receiving). This is simply a limitation of modern transceivers. Now of course there are special scenarios where the transmitted signal can be reflected back, but for all practical purposes, you should always think in terms of TWO radios communicating with each other.

Does that make more sense? I'm happy to elaborate further.

[ecburns33]

Okay, that seems pretty clear. So the basic beacon.py program will never be able to transmit and receive its own signal from the same board (assuming no reflection or any weird phenomena)? Thanks for the help!

[maholli]

Yep! Since a radios are used to communicate between physically disconnected systems, you'll always need at least one other "ground station" or "satellite" to receive the message.