Xbee coordinator
Couple of days ago, I picked a pair or Xbees at Sparkfun. The plan is to build low power sensor platform using PICs, Zigbee radios, and Linux. In this article, I’m sharing my experience in building with Xbees.
The BOM includes two Xbee 2.5 RPSMA radios, Xbee USB explorer, Xbee breakout, PIC18F4520 microcontroller, and a breadboard. The code is written in C18 and built in MPLAB. Project files are available in download section.
Even though it is (presumably) possible to get two Xbees talk without any configuration, I decided not to do it. First, the firmware was old; second, I’m planning on having more than two radios. In addition to that, new stack supports firmware upgrades over the air. I downloaded X-CTU and upgraded my radios to Xbee ZB; one became a coordinator( pictured on the right ), the other one a router.