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AVR600: RZ600 HW Manual
Features
• Contains the full selection of AT86RF family radio transceivers.
• Covers the 2.4GHz ISM band and 700, 800 and 900 MHz frequency bands.
• In total 3 pair of radio transceivers are available – one pair per radio
transceiver.
• Two AT32UC3A3256 based USB host boards are included
- Based on Atmel® AVR® UC3 core
- 80 Dhrystone MIPS and Draws Only 40 mA at 66 MHz
- Low, full and high speed USB compliant
- Ideal for PC to RF gateways, packet sniffers and network commissioning
tools
• On board ID chip for easy IEEE MAC address
• Stub antennas for all frequency bands
1 Introduction
The RZ600 kit is an evaluation kit for the Atmel AT86RF family of radio frequency
devices. The family contains the two 2.4 GHz device AT86RF230 and AT86RF231.
These are highly acclaimed networking devices within low power personal area
networks. In addition to this the world’s first IEEE 802.15.4 enabled sub gigahertz
radio is provided – the AT86RF212. With the kit you also receive two AVR UC3
based host nodes that can be used to evaluate a point to point network connection.
That being said; the RZ600 radio boards sport an Atmel standardized 10-pin
connector that will enable the RF boards to be connected to any AVR
microcontroller. A wide range of the standard Atmel AVR design tools have the
host end of the standardized 10-pin connector – so as a customer you will be able
to evaluate Atmel radio transceivers in virtually any application segment.
The RZ600 kit enables RF4CE, IEEE 802.15.4, ZigBee® and 6lowPAN network
technologies to run on the full Atmel portfolio of low power AVR microcontrollers.
Microcontrollers
Application Note
Figure 1-1. RZ600 HW Overview
Rev. 8293-AVR-02/10
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2 Related Items
3 Overview
AVR32 Studio (Atmel’s free IDE)
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=4116
GNU Toolchain (Atmel’s free Compiler and Utilities)
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=4118
JTAGICE mkII (On-chip programming and debugging tool)
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=3353
AVR ONE! (On-chip programming and debugging tool)
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=4279
This section gives an overview of the RZ600 kit from a system perspective as well as
what the kit contains and its minimum requirements. A set of condensed instructions
are then given on how to get the evaluation application for the kit up and running in
the shortest time possible.
Figure 3-1 shows how the two processor boards paired with the radio frequency
boards also available in the kit can form a wireless peer to peer data connection over
USB. The application that is pre programmed by Atmel on the AT32UC3A3256 is
indeed such a USB to RF gateway.
2
AVR600
8293-AVR-02/10
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Figure 3-1 RZ600 used in conjuntion with PC
RZ600 Processor Board
AVR600
3.1 Kit Contents
RZ600 RF Board
RF Link
The RZ600 kit contains the following pieces of hardware:
• 2 pcs. AT86RF230 radio cards: miniature carrier board with the AT86RF230 radio
transceiver mounted, SMA antenna connector, one wire ID chip and Atmel
standard 10-pin connector.
• 2 pcs. AT86RF231 radio cards: miniature carrier board with the AT86RF231 radio
transceiver mounted, SMA antenna connector, one wire ID chip and Atmel
standard 10-pin connector.
• 2 pcs. AT86RF212 radio cards: miniature carrier board with the AT86RF212 radio
transceiver mounted, SMA antenna connector, one wire ID chip and Atmel
standard 10-pin connector.
• 2 pcs. AVR UC3 based processor cards: usb dongle form factor board with
AT32UC3A3256 processor mounted, LEDs, UART connection and host side
Atmel standard 10-pin connector.
• 2 pcs. 2.4GHz SMA stub antenna. These are shared between the AT86RF230
and AT86RF231 radio transceivers.
8293-AVR-02/10
3
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3.2 System Requirements
• 2 pcs. Sub gigahertz SMA stub antenna. Used with the AT86RF212 radio
transceiver.
• 2 pcs. Bag with wires and squid cable: The squid cable fits the radio frequency
boards and will enable wiring to a hardware that does not contain the standard
Atmel 10-pin accessory header.
• 1 pcs. Technical Library CD
Table 3-1 contains the minimum system requirements for the RZ600 kit when
connected to a PC for application development on the AT32UC3A3256
microcontroller.
Table 3-1. Minimum System Requirements
Parameter Value Comment
Hardware
PC/CPU Intel® Pentium III or
better, 800 MHz
PC/RAM 128 MBytes
PC/Video 1024x768, SVGA
PC/ Hard disk free space 200 Mbytes
On-Chip Debugger and
programmer
Software
Operating System Windows®2000/XP/Vista
IDE AVR32 Studio or IAR
AVR JTAGICE mkII or
AVRONE!
Embedded Workbench
The AVR JTAGICE mkII or
AVRONE! is needed if the user
wishes to debug and do custom
application development.
AVR32 Studio with compiler
utilities is required for
reprogramming the processor
board and for application
development.
3.3 Quick Start Guide
To following sequence is suggested when testing the evaluation application the
RZ600 kit:
1. Unpack the kit and verify contents
2. Identify the processor boards and select two radio frequency boards with the same radio
transceiver mounted. It is suggested to do this even though there are two different radio
transceivers for the 2.4GHz band that are fully compatible with each other: AT86RF230 vs.
AT86RF231.
3. Mount a radio frequency board to each of the processor boards
4. Insert the assembly into a free USB port on the computer.
5. Let the devices enumerate – they should become available as two CDC virtual COM ports.
6. Open two terminal windows and start typing. Verify that the text in the two terminals is the
same.
4
AVR600
8293-AVR-02/10
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4 Hardware Description
This chapter walks through the different pieces of hardware that you will find in the
RZ600 kit in greater detail.
4.1 Radio Frequency Board
A total of six radio frequency boards included in the kit, two boards per radio
transceiver:
• AT86RF230: First generation 2.4GHz ISM band radio transceiver from Atmel.
• AT86RF231: Second generation 2.4GHz ISM band radio transceiver with front
• AT86RF212: 868/915MHz ISM band long range radio transceiver with front end
The radio transceiver share the same printed circuit board with slightly different
component values mounted for each of them. See Figure 4-2 for full schematics of
the radio frequency board.
AVR600
ends for antenna diversity and external power amplifier and encryption
accelerators.
for external power amplifier and encryption accelerators.
8293-AVR-02/10
5
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Figure 4-1 Radio Frequency Board Overview
SMA con
GND
MISC signal
selector
4.1.1 Connectors
Current sens
10 pin con
There are two main connectors on the board; one is the female SMA antenna
connector and in the opposite direction of the board is a 10-pin dual row header. See
Table 4-1 for pinout of this header.
MISC signal
6
AVR600
8293-AVR-02/10