I just finished an DFRobot tracked kit that included Xbee Radios. I have been trying to make them work. The robot works fine with supplied software via serial port. I have been trying to pair the Xbee’s without much success. I can see that the Xbee attached to laptop running on Hyperterminal is blinking green when I press the “W” key but I get no response from the other Xbee attached to the DFRobot shield atop the rover. Is there possibly an issue with pairing or with the Xbee/USB jumpers on the shield? I have them set to the Xbee side. I am pretty sure I have misread the instructions or am not getting it. Any help would be kindly appreciated
Thanks so very much. Just so I get this right I take of both jumpers from the shield and upload the sketch. Then I put them back in the Xbee Configuration. After that I set up an Xbee to Hyperterminal and make sure it is set at 9600 baud and it should transmit to the Xbee on the shield on the Rover.
Since I have already configured both Xbee’s with X-CTU to something different than the original state I must revert them. Would you be kind enough to let me know how to do this or suggest a reference please.
I will try this evening and appreaciate your patience;
I did plus I reset the Xbees and followed the instructions to the letter. I can not get them to transmit. The only led on the breakout board that blinks when I try to transmit is the RX. Got me a little worried here guys. I have followed the instructions and know that the program downloads the the Rover via serial and works from the Arduino serial window. But Xbee’s are not flying. What to do?
I want to put this to bed. I got a SparkFun Xbee board and after some fooling around it now runs correctly with the supplied program.
Dont ask me what I did because I do not know. Thanks.
Just so I get this right, I’ll take the two horsemen of the screen and download the sketches. I have therefore given their configuration XBee. After you create a XBee to Hyper Terminal and make sure it is set at 9600 baud, and it must send the XBee shield Rover…
There is a bit of configuration to do when uploading the sketch, then when implementing the sketch. First, ensure the baud rate is set both in the program and in hyperterminal (must be the same). Next, read through the jumper settings section of the XBee page. You should not need to do any additional configuration.
When uploading code, you need to remove the jumpers entirely. Once the code has been uploaded, you can put both jumpers back to XBee. You should not need to use X-CTU to get the modules working together. There are many other, much shorter programs you can write to test the XBees, such as reading and sending the values of the two onboard sensors to Hyperterminal.
As you are aware, the XBees, after a little setup, should work immediately out of the box. Can you provide a few images of your setup (how the XBee shield and XBee are mounted on the rover, how the rover is configured etc)? We will not exclude the possibility of one of the XBee modules (or even the shield) being faulty. This would be the final step before proceeding with an exchange. Please confirm again that the Rover works using a direct USB connection (so we know the rover itself is not the problem).
Not sure what “horsemen” refers to, but using the XBee modules with the DFRobotShop Rover should be simple - be sure to upload the sketch to the board via USB cable, then connect the XBee shield (with XBee transceiver) and go through Hyperterminal (as you would if the robot was connected with the USB cable) and set the Baud rate to 9600, Xon/Xoff.
It will take you trough the steps of updating the firmware and configuring your XBees.
Also, you need to make sure that both your XBees have the same PAN ID.
Also, you can use the Show Defaults button and then the Write button in X-CTU in order to revert to the default values. This should be automatic when upgrading the firmware but it is good t o know you can do it manually as well.
