Using the Xbee + shield as a usb cable replacement

Hello,

I’m trying to get rid of the usb cable in an Arduino project, so I got a set of Xbees, a Xbee explorer dongle and a Seeed Xbee Shield.

My sketch works perfectly through the usb cable connection so I’d like to simply attach this hardware to Arduino and remove the usb cable. I’m not in my comfort zone (marine engineer here) so I found the information in the Wiki page a bit confusing. Anyway I messed around with it a bit and found out it works well if I set both switched to the right. Here are my questions:

  • Is the serial communication going through Arduino’s digital ports 1 and 2?

  • Is this the best way to do what I want? Does another switch configuration work better in any way?

  • I’m not able to upload sketches this way. Do I have to change the switch setting to do this or is the problem elsewhere?

Here’s the link to the Wiki page:
http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=XBee%C2%AE_Shield#Xbee_Shield_Outline_and_Toggle_Switch_Position