M3pi and Xbee - first steps

Hello,

I placed an AXBEE on it’s place over m3pi robot.

  1. On which jumpers should I place shorting blocks ? all 3 of them ??
  2. Can someone post a simple program to receive and send simple text using XBEE ??

Thanks and best regards,
Peng

Hello.

Yes, all three jumpers should be used to directly connect the 3pi’s serial and reset pins. Also, it seems like you are already aware, but so it is clear for anyone else reading this: we do not have any specific examples for using an XBee with an m3pi. if you do not hear anything back in this thread, you might try posting in a more Xbee-focused forum.

-Jon

I took 2 XBEEs and made a communication between a pc and Arduino - and it works great.
Then I took the SAME XBEE from the Arduino and place it on the m3pi robot. I loaded to the robot the serial slave program (https://www.pololu.com/docs/0J21/10.a) and tried to send it some string. It supposed to display on the LCD - “bad cmd”… but it show nothing but the default message “Slave”. Of course I blocked all three jumpers.

What am I doing wrong ??

Specifically what command and data bytes are you sending? Also, can you link me to a resource that shows what code you ran on your XBees when you did a test with them and your computer/Arduino?

-Jon

I am trying a text - never mind which text, because it should respond to any text…
The same in computer/ Arduino - I am just sending and revving text through serial lines - and it transmit/ receive it in the second XBee unit.

Here is the answer… I spent hours of trying to solve it and in the end - it can’t work ! why didn’t you mentioned it ??

I am sorry I did not think about mentioning that earlier. We generally try to mention common issues customers might run into, or bring up relevant information where applicable. However, since your system has not had a power issue up until recently, it does not seem unreasonable that I had yet to check to make sure you were powering all of your devices.

We put a lot of time and effort into having detailed documentation so our customers can find all the information they need. I am glad you figured out what the issue was by reading the user’s guide.

To supply 3.3V power to your XBee without an mbed, you can use one of our step-down regulators to reduce the 3pi’s battery voltage, VBAT, to 3.3V. It looks like the D24V5F3 should be able to provide enough current for a standard XBee.

-Jon