Replies to This Discussion

DeveloperPermalink Reply by Randy on March 16, 2012 at 8:35pm

Santini,

     When you say, "diy adapter boards" you mean this one from 3d robotics?  My guess is it will because I think all the xbees have the same footprint and pin layout.  .. but I don't even fly with an xbee normally so I'm not the most reliable person in this particular area.

Permalink Reply by Ted Van Slyck on March 24, 2012 at 4:59pm

I happened to have to a couple of xbee XSC 900 mhz laying around and decided to see if I could make them work, which I did successfully. 

What I did.. not saying this is the desirable setup, but it worked.

Xbee XSC modules

DIY XtreamBee Board on my APM v1

DIY XtreamBee USB adapter

I changed the serial 3 baud of the APM to 9600

I set the XBEEs to 57600

My xbees did not allow a VID to be changed, so I changed the "Destination address". I Set it to 0100.

It works, but is a touch laggy. I got the idea to set the APM to output a slower baud than the xbees are communicating at by a post someone wrote mentioning "data piling up". So if the xbees talk faster than the APM, that cant happen. I am NOT experienced at this kind of stuff, FYI. This just happened to work for me. 

I have seen this question ALOT in the forums, so I decided to give it a go. 

I will try setting the the APM baud faster but still less than 57600 and see if that works with less lag. I can attest from experience that setting the APM and the XBEEs to 57600 or 9600 (the idea is that they are set the same) does not work and I get an error in mission planner that says my serial speed is not fast enough. 

Permalink Reply by Ted Van Slyck on March 24, 2012 at 5:18pm

OK  just now trying to duplicate I apparently broke it. It now says again my serial speed is too slow. It worked for a while, but when I recompiled the code I apparently broke it, sorry

Permalink Reply by Ted Van Slyck on March 24, 2012 at 10:30pm

OK...I figured this out...disregard all that stuff I said earlier. I am not sure why it worked, it only would intermittently anyhow. I have figured out how to make it work consistently. 

Modules: Xbee 900 mhz XSC

Firmware version 1022

The DIY adapter boards 

The key thing to understand here is that the RF rate between these two modules is 9600 kbps. If your computer or the APM attempt to communicate with the XBEE module faster than that the buffer for the module will very quickly fill and you get an error. To make this a non issue you have to set the baud rates for the modules, the APM and Mission Planner to 9600. 

1. Connect to the APM via a USB cable as always in Mission Planner.

2. Select the Configuration Tab.

3. On the left side all your settings are shown. Scroll down to Serial3_Baud. Change that from 57 to 9. Write the changes.

4. In X-CTU connect to each XBEE module and make sure they communicate 9600 baud. They ship that way, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem unless you have been messing with the settings. You change this under the "Modem Configuration" Tab. Change "Interface Data Rate" to 9600. You can also set the "destination channel". Mine is 0100, I think it has to be in that format at least.

5. Attach the Xbee to the APM as described in the wiki.

6. With the APM powered up with an XBEE attached, you computer powered up with an XBEE attached, open Mission Planner, set baud to 9600 and connect.

It consistently works for me, not as fast as my 09P model, but seems fine. I have not flown with it, but it works great in my living room. I've read on some forums about the XSC model needing a little more power that the APM will give. I have no idea if this is true or not, I will fly tomorrow and see if I have any problems and report back. 

Ted

Permalink Reply by Kevin Lourens on March 30, 2012 at 4:48am

Hi,

How is you Xbee's going? Still working? I have a problem same as yours i think.

Does your modems show up as XBP09-XSC in the X-CTU application? modem function as Xbee-Pro XSC 9600?

Thanks 
Kevin 

Permalink Reply by Ted Van Slyck on March 30, 2012 at 8:35am

Hi Kevin,

Ive got my XSC's working most of the time. They show as XBP09-XSC Function Set Xbee Pro XSC 9600 Version 1022. I am using the steps in my post above with the following change:

We need to change how ofter the APM is communicating certain things with the XBEE

1. Click on the configuration tab 

2. In that tab, there is a sub tab called Planner, click that

3. There is a line for "telemetry rates". Change them all to 1 except "RC". Set that to 0.

Unfortunately, I think the telemetry rates go back to default every time Mission Planner starts, or that was my experience, maybe that can be changed in the future. I found that without changing the telemetry rates I could connect just fine, but could not write any PIDS or waypoints to the APM. With the above changes it just works 90% of the time. When it hangs up I just disconnect and reconnect. 

Hows the status of your XSC's?

Ted

Permalink Reply by Kevin Lourens on April 2, 2012 at 7:28am

Hi Ted,

I have tried your advice and it works to get feeds from APM to laptop, it's a pity one can't write to the APM, kinda makes the kit useless!

I really hoped these units would be fine but after all this it seems they only run at 9600 which is to slow as we know now.

I have a set of Xbee 2.4 GHZ series 2 which i will rather try, now that is another story! Battling to get them going...

Thanks for all the help.

Kevin

Permalink Reply by Anand S. Biradar on May 20, 2012 at 12:51pm

Hi all of you,

         Can we connect different Xbee's , one is XSC & another id XBee PRO DP both have Atmel IC's on them. I set up baud rate of 9600 on both but still can't communicate.

Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on March 2, 2013 at 6:35pm

I posted a message about this in the 3DR radio forum but will ask here also. I got the same modems from digi since 3drobotics didn't have them. I have many of the 3drobotics 900MHz versions that I connect at 57k and they work great. Now I need some more but I need them to work with what I have and it looks like from reading here that they only communicate at 9600??? No way to set them to 57600???

If that is the case then I'm going to send these back but which is the right one to get? I'm not seeing at XBee PRO DP listed.

I would like to switch to 3DR radios but I'm using the ardutracker that uses an xBee connection.

This is what I got: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/XBP09-XCSIT-009/602-1278-N...

http://store.diydrones.com/product_p/br-0015-01.htm

I'm not seeing the 

Permalink Reply by Ted Van Slyck on March 2, 2013 at 6:45pm

Only the XSC model has that slow data rate...the you show from digikey below should do 57k no problem..

Permalink Reply by steve F11music.com on March 2, 2013 at 7:51pm

I have the XCSIT model. That is the link above. Below is the link of the one I think I should have got.

Permalink Reply by Ted Van Slyck on March 2, 2013 at 8:02pm

if you are looking for a stock xbee setup then go with what I posted a few posts below this...the xsc can be made to work, but only at 9.6k and not really reliably, and likely not with a 09P model. I highly recommend that if you want XBEE go with what I posted below, if you can go with the 3DR telemetry that is probably better, but I understand you want to keep all your gear XBEE for compatibility. 

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