xbee axe210 problems

E

ernio

New Member
I can't get working the axe 210 connect. As Hippy says "The first thing to do is get both XBee's configured using the Programming Editor XBee Wizard. Without that it's difficult to say what or where something is wrong." I never get it.
After some probes with the multimeter it seems that the problem lays in the 5V and 3V regulators: for example, the 3 V regulator only shows 2 V.
Then I started "XBEE wireless modules Filed under: PicAXE — profmason.com" but i have two silly questions: Are Tx and Rx in Xbee DOUT and Din according to the datasheet? The second question is that Profmason get the Xbee in the protoboard, I can't get it because the pins don't fit. The Max can but the Xbee not, but in the pictures both of them are in the same protoboard. Any ideas?
 
D

Dippy

Moderator
I haven't used the PICAXE kit, but have had lots of fun with XBees, very impressive.

If you really want to get to grips with XBee may I suggest you get the big long Data Sheet.
This will give the official pinouts (pitch 2mm) and all the settings and commands.

Out of the box all the XBees (well, the four that I have wrestled with) have the same PANID, channel and transparent,unicast mode as defaults.
Can't remember numbers offhand , so have a read of the Data Sheet, which in my Humble (but very impatient) opinion is not very well written as you have to keep going backwards and forwards cross-referncing.

I was lent (by CISECO) a lovely little USB/Xbee PCB, so that all my breadboarded comms attempts using PIC could be viewed easily.

Once I got used to it and able to set PanID, Channels, Powers etc from a PIC I realised how good it is.
I was very impressed with Data Integrity.
I never got round to experimenting with ZigBee stack so I can only comment on using it in it's very basic mode.

But as far as I was concerned you can get 2 XBees out of their packets, wire 'em up, and serial away.... lovely.

DOUT is pin 2 (i.e. XBee UART Serial Data Out/Tx)
DIN is pin 3 (i.e. XBee UART serial data In/Rx)

Hold XBee so you can read writing and the nearly-pointy end is upwards.
Pin 1 is top left. So, it goes pins 1 to 10 down the left hand side.
 
G

GDSever

Member
I have had some problems with the AXE210 voltage regulators as well, although in my case it was just the 5V regulator. It went bad somewhere along the line and as a result, the voltage going TO the 3V regulator was much too low to deliver an output voltage of 3V. I ended up swaping my 9V battery for a 4.5V (3 AA) pack, connecting to the 5V terminal, and it has worked well ever since.

If you bought some of the newer XBees (V2.5 or whatever they're on now), you won't be able to get them to communicate out of the box... at least I couldn't. I ended up buying the SparkFun XBee Explorer so I could load the Coordinator firmware onto one of the XBees, and then they connected just fine - however upgrading the firmware is not something you can do with the AXE210 board. If you have the older (V1) XBees, that is probably not the issue.
 
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