XBEE Shield, XBEEXSC, Arduino Uno R3

Products & Technology Bee series & WSN
#1

Hello everyone,

I have the Seed XBee Shield, Arduino Uno R3, and XBee Pro radios which I cannot seem to get working. I hope someone can point out what I am doing wrong. Some background info…

I used two Sparkfun XBee RS-232 adaptors with the two radios to configure them and test. I used XCTU and set the Baud rate to 57600. I connected the boards to two serial ports and opened two copies of XCTU (one for each). after configuring them, I switched to terminal on both. what I typed in one appears in the other in both directions. So far so good.

I launched the environment and downloaded the following Sketch:

int led = 13;
int a=0;
int b =0;

void setup()
{
    pinMode(led, OUTPUT);     
    Serial.begin(57600);                 // the terminal baud rate  
}

void loop()
{
  // write a message...
 Serial.println("Hello world"); 
  
  //blink the LED so I can see some activity
  a++;
  if (a >= 20) a=0;
  if (a=0)  b = 1-b;
  if (b=0)  {
  digitalWrite(led, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  }
  else {
  digitalWrite(led, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  }
}

disconnected the Uno. next I remove one of the radios and placed it in the Seeed XBee Shield. both switches are set to the right. plug it into the Uno and reconnect the USB cable.

I open the serial monitor and I see the ‘hello world’ message.
I see LED on pin 13 blinking.
the red RSSI LED on the shield is on at about 50% brightness
the green LEDs, Power, ON/Sleep, and ASSOC, all come on bright
after about 25 seconds the ON/Sleep and ASSOC LEDs go out.
I receive nothing on the other radio

I have tried all four switch setting. other than a change in the LEDs on the shield, nothing is different.

Any ideas what is wrong?

#2

Guess what?

I returned one of the two Seeedstudio XBEE boards I bought and got the Arduino XBee Shield and it works out of the box, with no changes to the radio profile or code.

I tried it with the other Seeedstudio board and sometimes it works if it receives characters over the air first. so I’m guessing that it didn’t work before because I was trying to get two boards talking and each was waiting for the other to start the conversation.

it looks like a classic fatal embrace to me.

I will be returning the other Seeedstudio board tomorrow. the arduino XBee Shield is only $4 more, and there is a prototype area and uSD socket.