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Arduino XBee Shield

Page history last edited by sarith.ong@liquidware.com 11 years, 8 months ago

 

The XBee Shield comes with an XBee radio module mounted, so there’s no need to purchase another radio separately.

 

XBee 2.5 Board 1: Knock Knock

 

XBee 2.5 Board 2: Who’s there?

 

XBee 2.5 Board 1: XBee.

 

XBee 2.5 Board 2: “XBee” who?

 

XBee 2.5 Board 1: XBee a letter dat come before Y.

 

XBee 2.5 Board 2: (forced) eh heh heh heh…

 

If you’re building a low-level serial-controlled Mesh network, that’s probably not too far off from what two of these things would probably say to each other. Hopefully with a little less humor, and a little more baud.

 

But the airwaves would be a lot less interesting without a pair of Libelium and arduino.cc developed carrier boards to support the XBee 2.5 MaxStream radio. One by itself isn’t all that interesting, but adding two together lets you control and communicate between two Arduino’s, or between an Arduino attached to a laptop and a TankShield skittering across the floor.

 

The XBee Shield module provides an easy interface to rig up zigbee wireless communications on your Arduino gadget. Attach the XBee Shield directly to your Arduino by fitting it directly on the pins, or use an Extendershield to get additional prototyping space for extra sensors.

Here is the XBee Shield module:


Here is the XBee Shield mounted along side a TouchShield Slide, Arduino, ExtenderShield and Lithium Backpack to make the ultimate wireless gadget.


The XBee Shield talks to the Arduino with serial communications, through Arduino Pins 0 and 1 as shown in the XBee Shield Schematic .

 


XBee Configuration


I wrote a tutorial on the Antipasto Blog

After hours of slaving over boring and confusing data sheets at digi.com and hours of tinkering with annoying chat programs and “AT” commands, I finally got 2 XBee Shields to communicate with each other!


Parts

  • 2 x Arduinos
  • 2 x XBee Shields
  • 2 x Solid Core Wire
  • 2 x USB Type-B Cables
  • 2 x Computers (I used 1 vista and 1 xp)


I will now go through the painful preliminary steps I did to setup my xbee network.


XBee Network Setup

  1. Download X-CTU from Digi’s website (And installed it… yeah, I installed the updates)
  2. Repeat for both computers
  3. Put both Arduinos in Reset
  4. Attach the XBee Shield to the Arduino
  5. Attach a USB cable from one arduino to Computer “A”
  6. Attach the other USB cable to the other arduino and Computer “B”
  7. Open X-CTU on Computer A
  8. Go to the “Modem Configuration” tab… set the Modem: XBEE to “XB24-B” AND set the Function Set to “ZNET 2.5 ROUTER/END DEVICE AT”
  9. Next is the Networking and Addressing Parameters…
  10. PAN ID = 1111
  11. Scan Channels = 15 (not sure if this is even needed)
  12. Channel Verification = 0 (also not sure if this is even needed)
  13. Destination Address High = 13A200 (I found this out by typing “AT” commands into a terminal program… first type in + the xbee will return an “OK” you are now in command mode… if you type “ATSH” then ”” (enter), the xbee will give you it’s own high address (source address) )
  14. Destination Address Low = 403E2502 (I found this out by typing “AT” commands into a terminal program)
  15. Broadcast Radius = 0
  16. Click the “Write” button on the Modem Configuration tab and wait for the XBee to program
  17. If some funny error comes up… click the button on the xbee shield and try to program it again
  18. Go to the “Modem Configuration” tab on computer B… set the Modem: XBEE to “XB24-B” AND set the Function Set to “ZNET 2.5 COORDINATOR AT”
  19. Next is the Networking and Addressing Parameters for the XBee attached to computer B…
  20. PAN ID = 1111
  21. Scan Channels = 15 (not sure if this is even needed)
  22. Channel Verification = 0 (also not sure if this is even needed)
  23. Destination Address High = 13A200 (I found this out by typing “AT” commands into a terminal program… first type in “+” the xbee will return an “OK” you are now in command mode… if you type “ATSH” then ”” (enter), the xbee will give you it’s own high address (source address) )
  24. Destination Address Low = 404A4FC4 (I found this out by typing “AT” commands into a terminal program)
  25. Broadcast Radius = 0
  26. Click the “Write” button on the Modem Configuration tab and wait for the XBee to program
  27. If some funny error comes up… click the button on the xbee shield and try to program it again
  28. whew… now both devices are configured properly… open the X-CTU terminal tab of each computer… type and see the characters fly from pc to pc


I would like to thank the help of the following people…

 

 

Specs

 

 Media

 

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