Xbee Communication Part 1: Getting Started

I have spent my free time in the past few days playing with Xbee wireless modules. I move at a snail's pace because I'm terrible at managing my time effectively. I did manage to get the two modules to communicate. Not bad for like three intermittent hours of work. I spent a few celebratory minutes typing messages between the two before I decided to start making dinner.

The first step to working with the Xbees, aside from ordering the parts from Sparkfun.com, was to solder the breakout boards and wire the circuits up on breadboards. I managed to miss the recommendation that you purchase the 2mm sockets with the breakout board so that you can change the Xbee modules at a later date so I ended up soldering them directly to the breakout boards.

I also purchase a logic level converter from Sparkfun in order to step down the voltage of the serial data lines from the arduino to the Xbee from 5V to 3.3V. I had to solder header pins on this as well, but the SMD chips were already on the PCB so I didn't have to do the painstaking work of soldering those tiny things on myself.

I ran into a few problems getting the Xbees to respond to my serial commands. The first problem was that I seemed to have the TX and RX lines reversed. I could have sworn that they we wired as the diagram in Making Things Talk showed, but my mind often wanders from the page to the breadboard, so I could have been wrong. The second problem was just the fact that I had multiple serial terminals open at the same time. This resulted in some error messages or the terminals simply not responding at all. Personally, I prefer the error message, even if I didn't bother reading it.

I chatted with Lee about the problem at work and he told me about the conflict with multiple serial terminals and I was able to fix the problem as soon as I knew to only do one at a time. Now that I have the two talking I need to figure out a project where they might be useful. I'm sure that I'll think of something eventually. At least I've taken the first baby steps though.