Anyone get XBee on board their Blimpduino?

Blimpduino uses an ATMega 328 with an arduino bootloader. The same will apply to any atmega 328 with arduino bootloader. It is relatively easy to get serial connection (TX/RX) over pin 0 and 1 UART with XBee but more difficult to program the controller wireless via XBee. I think this has something to do with the buffer and timeouts in the bootloader, but maybe I just havent gotten the reset circuit right. Something Ill have figure out later, because I fried my last 3 2n2222s trying to get the reset.

The tutorials are for series 1 which is the way to go as far as Ive been able to tell from the forums. If you follow them to the end they will set you up for wireless bootloading. If you follow them to the part about configuring the reset pin they help you get your Xbees setup for serial telemetry and command.

http://www.ladyada.net/make/xbee/arduino.html

http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/122

Get X-CTU running and talking to your XBee units. config Xbees as shown in the tutorials. I did put the jumper on the base board as described in both tutorials. I get telemetry without the remote rest line. I just cant program it.

RTFD - Sparkfun Xbee breakout board has Rx/Tx inverted from Ladyada. Ladyada plugs into FTDI. sparkfun breakout board you will need to invert the TX and Rx pins.

Xbee Adapter - wireless Arduino programming

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Berto June 11, 2011 at 1:09am

Blimpduino uses an ATMega 328 with an arduino bootloader. The same will apply to any atmega 328 with arduino bootloader. It is relatively easy to get serial connection (TX/RX) over pin 0 and 1 UART with XBee but more difficult to program the controller wireless via XBee. I think this has something to do with the buffer and timeouts in the bootloader, but maybe I just havent gotten the reset circuit right. Something Ill have figure out later, because I fried my last 3 2n2222s trying to get the reset.

The tutorials are for series 1 which is the way to go as far as Ive been able to tell from the forums. If you follow them to the end they will set you up for wireless bootloading. If you follow them to the part about configuring the reset pin they help you get your Xbees setup for serial telemetry and command.

http://www.ladyada.net/make/xbee/arduino.html

http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/122

Get X-CTU running and talking to your XBee units. config Xbees as shown in the tutorials. I did put the jumper on the base board as described in both tutorials. I get telemetry without the remote rest line. I just cant program it.

RTFD - Sparkfun Xbee breakout board has Rx/Tx inverted from Ladyada. Ladyada plugs into FTDI. sparkfun breakout board you will need to invert the TX and Rx pins.

Xbee Adapter - wireless Arduino programming
clayton.chu January 25, 2011 at 12:09pm

Thanks for that. I tried messaging them on Youtube.. no dice.

I found a couple other sites (http://www.herearerobots.com/2010/01/blimpduino-xbee/ and http://deadprogrammersociety.blogspot.com/2009/05/project-flying-ro...) where they successfully mounted XBee onto their Blimpduinos - but give no direction on how they did it, and their sits have no contact info! :(
user January 20, 2011 at 3:57pm

I haven't used XBee so i don't know what pins you actually need available. But I do know there are available I2C and Serial ports on the BlimpDuino.

Also, according to the 0:12 mark on this video, it's apparently possible. You could try getting in contact with them...

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Anyone get XBee on board their Blimpduino?

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