Hey there,
When we try to use more than 11 anchors in our RTLS system, the 12th and up anchors exhibit the following behaviors:
- unable to range with the master node
- send out announcement packets every few seconds
- blink yellow, then green a few times, then yellow again
It is as if they are constantly dropping off of the network. The firmware reports as REL.0.5.0.3
Also, the GUI doesn’t usually allow us to add these via the button, so we typically have been adding them by editing the config file ourselves. Occasionally, the GUI does allow us to add anchors beyond 11 (anchor 0-10), which seems to be a UI bug.
Thanks,
Micah
A network using firmware REL-0.5.0.3 and Host software REL-0.5.0.4 only officially supports a maximum of 10 anchors and 48 tags. After the 10th anchor or 48th tag, any additional device you add can start to have odd behavior. This is due to the fact that the demo software does not yet have fully optimized air-time usage for RF transmissions, so when you add devices beyond the limits supported by the GUI configuration window, the transmissions from the additional devices can start to collide with the transmissions of other devices on the network. If you want to ensure such a thing does not happen with the current demo release, we suggest adhering to the maximum limits of 10 anchors and 48 tags.
In future releases, we will be adding in support for the use of more wireless anchors, and we will also be adding in support for wired backhaul of the data from the anchors. With this feature, the anchors will be able to use a wired connection to forward their data instead of having to transmit over the air, and as a result, the number of anchors that can be supported will be multiplicatively increased. More details on this wired backhaul feature will be unveiled whenever we release a demo version that incorporates this feature. For now, just know that we are working on various methods of increasing the maximum size of the network.