So for my fourth year Engineering project in school, I need to make an arduino wirelessly controllable from a computer.
So for this I figured I would add wireless communication by using Xbee, and then transmit the information from the computer wirelessly through the Serial Monitor. So I got me two DI (Maxstream) Xbee Series 1 modules, an explorer unit for my computer, and a Xbee shield for my Arduino Uno.
So I used X-CTU to test weather the the Xbee modules were working. The one connected to the USB Explorer unit is recognized and works no problem, but the one connected to the Shield does not.
I swapped the modules just to make sure that they are both working which they are.
When I run the test/query in X-CTU, it tells me that an action is required and that it was unable to communicate with the modem. It tells me to press the reset button, which I do and it does nothign.
I am stooped, as I have no idea what to do
Soemthing I dont know what it means. The red LED by ASSOCIATE keeps flashing red, I’m guessing this is important but I cant for the life of me find out what it means!!!
I got them communicating, my problem is that now I can’t seem to find a way to download and reporam the microcontroller wirelessly.
I’ve seen a lot of tutorials but all of them deal with the serial output on the Xbee and not the USB one, and they also dont have a shield, so I’m not sure how to do this
The XBees should work out of the box without any configuration required. make sure they are both using the same communication parameters in X-CTU. You can read the parameters of one of them and flash them onto the other to be certain.
As per your message, we assume that you have a communication link established and that you can and serial commands back and forth. A simple way to test this is to do a loop-back test by connecting RX and TX together on the remote end and sening messages on the local XBee. You should get the same message immediately back.
In order to program your Arduino device via XBee, you need to set up a reset circuit or reset the Arduino manually right before it gets the first command. You also need to make sure the programming and the XBee communication are done using the same baudrate.