Seeeduino Stalker v2.0 – first test
I just received my packages with the order from Singapore (Seeeduino company). I waited for it a lot. For a simple test I configure the devices as in the figure presented below.
The both XBee radio modules (series 2) have been configure with the application X-CTU and the firmware was updated to the last version. One radio device was configured as coordinator AT and one as router AT (using the same application). I succeded very easy to make a simple communication between them and after that install a simple Arduino application (which just blink a led) on the Seeeduino Stalker device.
My first impresion is that it easy to work with them and doesn’t require many knowledge about electronics (this is the advantage of having separated functionalities on modules). I will do more experiments with them these days and do more complex applications (I need more time to do this since I want also the information to be stored into a database for future processing).
I also have a good help, a book which I order some time ago: Building Wireless Sensor Networks with ZigBee, XBee, Arduino and Processing (by Robert Faludi, O’Reilly Media – could be found on Amazon at a good price).
Hi,
thanks for the good post! I am trying to program my stalker 2 with exactly the same xbee2 modems and the uartsbee 3.1 but somehow i don´t seem to get it to work. I configured the xbee2 on the uartsbee to be Zigbee coordinator at and specified a baud rate on both 57000.
Is there anything else you changed with the parameters?
Thank you so much,
Nik
Hi Nik,
as I remember the baudrate for serial communication was set by default at 9600 and I didn’t change it. One XBee device should be configured as Coordinator AT and the other one I configured as Router AT (if it is set to End Device AT it is much probably that the device to be in sleep mode and it wakes up only at certain periods of time). Also, for each XBee device you have to set the destination address of the node with which it makes the communication (also, with X-CTU application): for coordinator the destination address will be the router 64bit address and for router the destination address will be the coordinator address. The 64bit address of any XBee device is printed by manufacturer on the bottom side of the device.
Hope this will help you to make them work.
Catalin
Hi Catalin,
thanks for the reply. In the meantime i managed to make them communicate i.e. i uploaded via cable a program to the stalker and only then used the xbees for serial communication.
Uploading programs via the xbees series 2 still doesnt work (i will check baudrate)
I have read some confusing posts on the web (can´t remember where) that uploading programs to the arduino is only possible with the xbees series 1 and not series 2. Can you confirm that you also use the xbee connection for program upload?
Thanks
Nik
Hi again,
I din’t use until now the XBee connection (wireless) to upload a new firmware application to Seeeduino Stalker or Arduino, just with the cable. It will be a feature which I will want to test it also as soon as possible.
The documentation of the Seeduino Stalker v2 said that:
… so it should work also with XBee Series 2.
I have made some research today about the wireless programming. A good tutorial could be found here: http://www.ladyada.net/make/xbee/arduino.html. Some modifications could be necessary depending on the devices used.
But, since I’m using the API mode for communication between XBee devices a wireless programming don’t seem to be possible :(, only in AT mode it will work (which from my point of view is limited in many ways).