XBee and Arduino communication

Question

I am in the middle of my project, and I am now trying to make a connection between two XBees, exactly like in this the YouTube video XBee Basics - Lesson 2 - Simple Chat Program Between Two XBees in AT Mode. I setup the network in the X-CTU first, and now I am trying to connect the XBees with Arduinos.

In the Arduino programming software, the side of the router works fine - I can see in the serial monitor that it's sending the "Hello World" messages, but on the side of the coordinator, it does not receive any massages.

Platform:

• Arduino IDE version 1.03-1.05.
• XBee Series 2
• Arduino Uno

Answer 1

I suppose that the "Hello word" message on the router side is due to a Serial.print() instruction that you have included for debbuging purpose.

Arduino Uno like my Arduino nano have only one serial port (the usb) and if you use it for power purpose or debugging or transmitting data to the PC it is considered busy and anything connected to the pin 0 and 1 will be ignored. Serial: 0 (RX) and 1 (TX). Used to receive (RX) and transmit (TX) TTL serial data. These pins are connected to the corresponding pins of the ATmega8U2 USB-to-TTL Serial chip. it is from arduino site).

You need to create a software serial port with the library SoftwareSerial (is it included in Arduino IDE since version 1.0)

to call the library and define the software serial port you can use this piece of code

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
uint8_t rxxbee = 2;
uint8_t txxbee = 3;
SoftwareSerial Serial_xbee(rxxbee,txxbee);

Rember to connect the RX of the arduino to TX of the XBee and viceversa.