Right now "easy" and "streaming" are two independent layers on top of the raw RF12 driver, and they can't really be mixed. Mixing "easy" and "normal" (raw driver) is probably also not possible, because the easy layer is written with the assumption that it's in full control of the driver (polling and handling acks).
The easy/normal mixing restrictions are not, eh, easy to fix. But it might be possible to redo the streaming layer to work on top of the easy layer (hope you're still with me...). The streaming interface was basically an earlier attempt to achieve some notational convenience in combination with a packaging convention.
The reason I didn't pursue the streaming interface much further so far, was that this sort of functionality should really be independent of the transport layer used. The same "RF12 << a << b" notation could also work for serial links, in both binary and ascii flavors. It's basically a notation trick to wrap up a bunch of bytes, which could then be transmitted, stored, or displayed in various ways.
I'm starting to use the easy layer some more, and there are some plans for handling ack data so that information can flow both ways (but always initiated by the transmit side, even if only to poll for ack data). For low-power remote nodes, there is really no other way to do this, since they can't pick up new packets when in sleep/power-down mode.
I'll look into decoupling the streaming layer a bit more so it can work with with the easy calls. Good idea, thanks.
