I am new to the world of UWB, and I need something for my research project. I am looking for something with a high update rate (at least every 100ms) and accuracy (single-digit centimeter-level accuracy). I have some DWM3001CDK in the mail, but I am afraid that there aren’t many resources online for this at all. I wonder if the ESP32 DW3000 would be any different. What are the differences between them?
If you have any suggestions on some other boards I can use for my project, please let me know!
Both systems have the exact same chip so in theory the capabilities are the same.
The DWM3001CDK will be able to run the official decawave drivers.
The ESP32 version will be running an older version of the drivers from before they became closed source. However the older version seems to work fine, for basic uses you’re not going to have any issues.
The ESP drivers are often used with an extra wrapper (e.g. by makerfabs) over the top that makes it a little simpler to get a basic ranging system going. As soon as you want something that is outside of what the examples or wrappers do you’re basically in the same position with either system.
In other words it probably doesn’t make a huge difference. The ESP32 version may be a little bit quicker to get a basic system going but if you want anything other than very basic range measurement you’re in the same situation using the same API on both. You may as well pick based on the tool chain you prefer and whether you need any of the the other capabilities the platforms offer or not.
As for your basic requirement, accuracies of <10cm are possible but get tricky with the off the shelf kit, the orientation of the antenna can start to become a significant source of error.
But on the plus side 10 Hz is not a high update rate. You can run a full double sided two way range (4 radio packets total) at 1 kHz if you set things up correctly. If you run the ranging fast enough you can do some averaging to reduce the noise in the output and still easily hit your required output speed.