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Converting antennas between different XBEE PCB styles.

Posted by Krzysztof Bosak on July 26, 2012 at 4:08am

Hi,

I was able to obtain certain number of XBEE PRO modules at 50mW with wire antenna, no chance to get them with SMA antenna. However I would like to solder a specific connector. Unfortunately, the PCB layout is different:

Type A is for SMA, uFL and WIRE     3689470293?profile=original

Type B is for Small PCB patch antenna, uFL and WIRE

3689470356?profile=original

the second one is more popular. I was trying to figure out what is connected to what when trying to mount SMA connector, but given the fact that the SMA in xbee is sometimes mentioned to be 'Reverse Polarised SMA' I am lost about which part of the connector should be soldered to what. ohmmeter of course reveals nothing, all appears to be connected together on type B board. What the...?

Tags: sma, xbee, antenna, connector, patch, ufl, wire, zigbee
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Comments

  • Jon von Weymarn July 25, 2013 at 1:42am
    Ok. I will try this at some point. Just need to order the parts and gather the courage to maybe break the module... :-/

    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=62WiPscjh4Y&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3...

    https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9144
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    Krzysztof Bosak July 24, 2013 at 3:57pm

    No idea so far, not enough modules to let them burn by mistake.

  • Jon von Weymarn July 24, 2013 at 2:31pm

    Did you ever figure this out? I have a type B with a wire antenna and the signal is crap. I would like to upgrade to SMA...

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    Krzysztof Bosak July 27, 2012 at 4:26am

    healthyfatboy you haven't browsed your own reference?

    WRL-08742

    High power, no SMA. Same model but with SMA is long time out of stock, but you get one in devkit package (which I have and I know it is well XBEE Series 1) so I know it existed once. XBEE uses certain mixture of two types of PCBs and puts onto them S1(xbee, xbee pro) or S2(xbee-zigbee) non-compatible chips.

    Clearly S1 and S2 are not compatible but I am asking about PCB layout only.

    Now back to subject. PCBs. How to solder SMA onto second one without burning modem's output stage, if possible?

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    healthyfatboy July 26, 2012 at 4:58pm

    The second one doesn't look like a PRO module but the normal, lower power modules that can't use SMA.

    Look through the images here. You'll see what the varios ones look like for Series 2 modules.

    http://www.sparkfun.com/search/results?term=xbee+series+2&what=...

    You do understand that theses pictures you have are Series 2 but the ones used on all the APM gear are Series 1. They aren't compatible with one another and the Series 2 take a lot more work to get them to talk serial to each other. Series 1 is basically plug and play.

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