Comment by Björn Geir Leifsson on June 17, 2011 at 6:25am

Would this kit be available somewhere in 2,4GHz for European use?

Admin Comment by Thomas J Coyle III on June 17, 2011 at 7:17am

@Bill,

The Adafruit Xbee adapter does level shifting and has a 500ma regulator. The Parallax Xbee adapter does level shifting, but does not have an adequate voltage regulator for the Pro.

Regards,

TCIII

Comment by healthyfatboy on June 17, 2011 at 7:20am

I looked at the specs and it's hard to tell but is this Series 1 or 2? The datasheet in the DIY Drones store said that it was firmware upgradable to handle mesh networking but there's an article on Digi's website showing that Series 1 isn't able to handle mesh networks anymore.

I hope these are Series 2 as that would be the most useful to me but I can't tell. Do you know Chris?

Comment by Paul Feely on June 17, 2011 at 7:43am

@Bjorn see this post re:2.4GHz
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/xbee-telemetry-kit-for-use-in?xg_...

Comment by Coptaire on June 17, 2011 at 8:39am

Sooooo many XBee modules exist and it is wise to carefully choose the right references.

The choice can be based on antenna type, RF power, supply voltage etc...

 

About configuration, you can either bind 2 xbee loosely or tightly, depending on XBee registers.

Choosing between short addressing and long addressing is also something to decide, or to consider irrelevant.

Comment by Patrick Mccabe on June 17, 2011 at 9:55am

@Thomas,

I see no level shifting on the DOUT of the Adafruit adapter, http://www.ladyada.net/images/xbee/xbee11sch.png which is Bill's concern. I did not check the Parallax one.

Comment by Cliff-E on June 17, 2011 at 7:31pm

Thomas/Bill,

But there are issues on some of the Spark fun boards--the non-USB dev boards have a diode that limits the output to around 220mA, and the xBee Pros need at least 250 (more likely 300). One finds the unit works on X-CTU but garbage data comes out on DOUT (as well as DIN) when reading between xBees. The easiest thing is to remove the diode and short the connection with a glob of solder, it's near pins 7&8 IIRC. I had to do it on 10 boards and they've been working flawlessly since. Unfortunately, the diode was a safety mechanism so be careful on how you hook up your circuit(s).

Anyone on here using API mode and the AIO/DIO ports on the xBees? I'm looking at how difficult the protocol is as I'm using AT commands to poll those port (DIO0->3) currently and it's a bit slow for my tastes...


healthyfatboy: The pics are not series 1 nor 2. The series 1/2 had printed in big letters on the board 'Series X'. These are the newer ATMEL versions. A lot like the Series 2, but much better. I thought they stopped selling the 1/2's (?). A big difference is that reading from the AIO's on these require a logic Vref be hooked into pin 14 in order for them to register values, where as the Series 1/2 didn't need it (was always 5V Vref).

Comment by Bill Porter on June 17, 2011 at 7:45pm

@Cliff

 

Like I said, the multiple issues we've seen on SOR forums was corrected by adding level shifting up. It has nothing to do with power limits. 

 

I've brought it up on Sparkfun comments section and I have been ignored. I'm guessing it's because I'm right. Can someone dive into the spec sheets and confirm / correct my findings? This seems like a rather bad oversight by the designers of these carrier boards that claim 5V logic levels. 

Comment by Cliff-E on June 17, 2011 at 8:01pm

If I can get a scope this weekend I can try it (or if I figure out how to get it working on xoscope). I'm using the xBees on a Mikokopter, so it appears to handle DIO fine but would not be surprise if that's the case since I found AIO differences between Series 2 and XBee Pros. Yep, I did see the discussion about the level issue on both Digi and sparkfun forums...

Comment by healthyfatboy on June 18, 2011 at 10:23am

There are still series 1 and series 2 (actually 2.5) that are available now. The 2.5 is able to do mesh networking while series 1 is limited to point to point and star configurations. It would be nice to know if this was 1 or 2.5 because I plan on creating my own home network for things but would like all my XBees to be the same series so I don't have to worry about the differences between the different kinds.

Comment

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next ›
• Page