Comment by Michael on April 10, 2009 at 4:00am

Try this site.

http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=29&products_id=126

Comment by Reto on April 10, 2009 at 4:46am

Neat Xbee breakout too. But since I already have a regulated +3.3v power source, I could add the second RSSI led and would have about the same for half the price. Anyhow I have no need plugging it to an FTDI. Thanks for the link.

3D Robotics Comment by Jordi Muñoz on April 11, 2009 at 10:48am

I have several of those Sparkfun boards (like 10) and i don't like them... I prefer for the airplane the adafruit one and the Sparkfun USB version for the ground station (the red one with FTDI chip)...

Comment by Reto on April 11, 2009 at 11:26am

Hi Jordi. Good you found better ones. Those were the first I ordered, so I use them! But if I get more Xbees then I'll certainly try some others.

Comment by ian on April 12, 2009 at 8:24am

jordi: Can you say what you do not like about them? I have neither, but since my uC is already at 3.3V (not an arduino), I don't need the level converter on the Adafruit board, I guess the the leds might be helpful though. On the Sparkfun site it lists a number of complaints for their XBee board related to the assembly. Perhaps this is what you are referring to?

3D Robotics Comment by Jordi Muñoz on April 12, 2009 at 9:57am

Ian:

This boards are simple and nice, but are more for prototyping (you know put it in and breadboard make connections and so on). I love the adafruit because it has its own power regulator so you can connect it o the Ardupilot power supply. Also (and is very important) it has 5v TLL converter to 3v TTL level signals, very important because the Xbee works only with 3V signals and ArduPilot don't. If you are using the 2.4ghz XBee version you must convert those signals, only the 900mhz versions support 5Volts TTL signals without damaging the board (over time).. But this only in the latest versions.

3D Robotics Comment by Jordi Muñoz on April 12, 2009 at 10:01am

Sparkfun red board, is nice if you want to interface easily to USB (i mean the computer), but it doesn't have power regular and TTL signal converter, and is a lot more expensive than Adafruit... And extra point of adatruit is that you can modify it to easily interface with ardupilot...
Later i will develop my own XBee board, and open source it...

Comment by Reto on April 12, 2009 at 2:45pm

Thanks Jordi for adding this comparison detail. I'm sure the Jordixbee breakout board will be a handy alterntive!

Comment by ian on April 13, 2009 at 5:04pm

Thanks for the comments Jordi. Since I already have 3.3V levels on my uC though, I was mainly curious about assembly differences. Given the negative comments on the sparkfun site regarding assembly: did you find the adafruit pcb to be less problematic, or the comments on sparkfun not to be relevant for you? You mentioned having 10 of these pcb's, so I assumed you were quite comfortable with assembly

Comment by Reto on April 13, 2009 at 11:51pm

To be honest, I really wonder what could go wrong when assembling the Sparkfun breakout?

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