xbee's don't work - ardupilot, diydrones board, xbee pro 900's - Discussions

I just got the whole setup for ardupilot 2.7, including the xbee pro 900 (one of the wire antennae, and one of the hard antanne (RPMSA) ) along with the diydrones xtreambee adapter boards. I have everything set up according to the diydrones manual but the xbees do not talk to each other. I used the program from digi to set the baud rate and id #. after it did not work, i found a post where the guy said he used version 1002 instead of 1061 and if worked for him, so i did the same and it worked. i unplugged everything and thought i was on my way. i tried it again last night and now they dont talk again. i figured maybed some settings got lost when power was removed, so i re-did everything but still they wont talk. the one with the white wire has one blue and one red light solid, and to flashing amber lights. The xbee connected to my ftdi cable and computer has only a blue light one. the red light and amber lights come on when i reprogram it, but then dont work. when it did work, the lights lit up like the other one.

so then i tried some instructions that talked about setting the xbee so it shows as a 232. that did not make it work either.

I am new to this and am losing patience. does digi take support calls? or does someone know how to get these things working?

thanks!

Interesting, I was about to post more or less the exact same problem.

Maybe we can both work it out and find out what the problem is. Take your wire xbee to xctu and query/read it at the configured baud rate. On mine when it stops working, I cannot communicate with the modem at all until I reflash it with XPB900-DP v1002 in X-CTU and redo the baud and ID settings.

My problem, in detail, seems a lot like yours:

Two XBP900s one RPSMA (laptop, on a sparkfun USB adapter) one wire antenna (plane, on a DIYDrones xtreambee).

Each was flashed with ver 1002 of the XBP900 firwware in x-ctu at set to 57600 baud and matching IDs.

They pair and work fine, until I start fidgeting with things in the plane. I still have to confirm exactly what the trigger is with more tests. When it does stop working, the RSSI light on the airborne xbee stays on. When this happens, I know I'm done for, and have to remove it from the plane, re flash it with 1002 firmware and then redo the ID and baud rate. Then everything works fine once again.

What I've observed so far:

It seems like the wire antenna xbee is losing it's NVRam. I am unsure what the trigger is, but if left on and undisturbed I am able to get telemetry data for several hours.

My theory so far:

This is either a defective xbee, or possibly a short in the DIY xtream adapter. I'm uncertain if shorting any two pins on the xbee could cause it to dump the nvram. I will be switching the ground and air xbees to see if the behavior remains with the plane or follows the xbee.

Replies

estebanflyer June 13, 2011 at 11:06pm

Ok... I'm on my 3rd night of trying to configure telemetry with no success. I will start by listing what I am using first:

Windows 7

X CTU

XBee Pro 900, soft and hard antenna

Xtreambee adapters

FTDI cable with updated USB drivers

I ordered the APM board from jdrones and included the 2 way telemetry kit on this order, and that's what I received. Should I drop everything now and get the ardufruit and the sparkfun adapters? On X CTU I can't go further than 'query'. it shows 'unknown'. I tried unbricking it... nothing.

thanks for your help!

Esteban
Don Brooks May 5, 2011 at 8:10am

Interesting, I was about to post more or less the exact same problem.

Maybe we can both work it out and find out what the problem is. Take your wire xbee to xctu and query/read it at the configured baud rate. On mine when it stops working, I cannot communicate with the modem at all until I reflash it with XPB900-DP v1002 in X-CTU and redo the baud and ID settings.

My problem, in detail, seems a lot like yours:

Two XBP900s one RPSMA (laptop, on a sparkfun USB adapter) one wire antenna (plane, on a DIYDrones xtreambee).

Each was flashed with ver 1002 of the XBP900 firwware in x-ctu at set to 57600 baud and matching IDs.

They pair and work fine, until I start fidgeting with things in the plane. I still have to confirm exactly what the trigger is with more tests. When it does stop working, the RSSI light on the airborne xbee stays on. When this happens, I know I'm done for, and have to remove it from the plane, re flash it with 1002 firmware and then redo the ID and baud rate. Then everything works fine once again.

What I've observed so far:

It seems like the wire antenna xbee is losing it's NVRam. I am unsure what the trigger is, but if left on and undisturbed I am able to get telemetry data for several hours.

My theory so far:

This is either a defective xbee, or possibly a short in the DIY xtream adapter. I'm uncertain if shorting any two pins on the xbee could cause it to dump the nvram. I will be switching the ground and air xbees to see if the behavior remains with the plane or follows the xbee.

This reply was deleted.