Bought the pro 900 telemetry kit from DIY for my APM2, but no luck getting them to communicate. Both XBee's communicated fine with X-CTU, setting baud to 57600 and a VID to 989. I even re bricked them and successfully upload new firmware and reset the baud and VID again. Read show all the proper settings as well. The Extreme board is set to master. So here's the sequence for blinky lights it that help lol!
Plug in the base side (usb adapter board) and the rx and tx give a couple amber flashes while the blue power led stay on.
Turn on the air side, blue power comes on steady and 1C flashes then goes out. At the same time the base side turns on the red rssi led then goes out. Now all that's lit on both sides are the blue power leds.
In the flight planner I select 57600 and the appropriate com port and hit connect. The red rssi come on steady and the 1O flashes on the air side.
Finally it times out and I get the "No heartbeat packets received". Even tried it outside for GPS lock and the error details said that could be a problem.
Any help for the XBee newb?
Replies
Shot in the dark, I am as newb as you, but I too can read a wiki and follow directions. No one helped me on my xbee issues, maybe I can at least share your woes.. HAH
I have had nothing but problems with my xbees, so I feel for you. Mine acted quirky at first blue flickering oddly and red flash from time to time, leds would dim at odd times, was a loose ground wire on the harness that came with it. The pin crimper cut some of the straqnds and it was hanging on by a thread. Check the ground pins, pop the wire loose carefully inspect one at a time while you are powered down, I found mine (came with DIY adapters) had a bit of a loose ground and I bricked one of them the first round, I powered down put a new pin connector and it worked till it died a day later...
I think I am running the same setup xbees from digikey, are the adapters from DIY? Mine worked great for a few days and then poof just stopped, checked and reflashed but I get nothing but solids on the drone side adaptor. I have only one usb and no ftdi cable to connect to the drone side, but both xbees are flashed properly according to ctx.
I have ordered a new adapter, if it isn't the adapter then it is something going on the apm side. I will watch to see if you get this resolved, seems like general problems for us xbee "newbs".
You're not connected. You need the RSSI leds on both on. What is the function set (in xctu) loaded on your xbees?
You can always run the serial port test app, though it will blow away your firmware and you'll need to reload. Yes, in xctu, make sure the is modem XBP09-DP and the function set is XBEE-PRO 900 and version is the latest number (1061).
I run digimesh on sparkfun boards, which works fine here (if you want to convert, let me know)--it's XBP09-DM/XBEE-PRO DIGIMESH 900/8062. If you have the XbeePro 900 or digimesh, you can load the digimesh firmware (same transceiver)--digimesh is a bit slower but more robust and easy to setup.
I had similar problems with my Xbee bought at Digikey.
With X-CTU, one card is recognized correctly and had no problems, since the other (which will in model aircraft) was not recognized.
I installed the firmware XBP09-DP forced and still did not work.
Then I realized that the "Function Set" was "232 Adaptor", I changed to "Xbee PRO 900" and after that everything worked.