XBee and Propeller Boards

Martin Hebel

XBee applications boards are back - AppBee's... Well, sorta.· Due to being contacted often about boards, but not having the time to solder them any longer, bare boards are available for your BASIC Stamp and Propeller applications.· Part lists are available for ordering parts mainly through DigiKey, though most parts you may have on hand already.

http://www.selmaware.com/appbee/home.htm

Also, I made up some boards we did for our microcontroller course to be offered up for sale under the SelmaWare name instead of SIU·(and hopefully defer my costs for the ones for the class and other uses - recruiting give aways).· It's a fairly minimal composite video/breadboardable application board.·It supports both the PropPlug and USB-CE5 in case·someone wants to power it via USB.· Again, it's a bare PCB, so populate to your liking and needs.

http://www.selmaware.com/propeller_video_app_board.htm

Thanks,
Martin



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StampPlot - GUI and Plotting Software
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Electronic Systems Technologies

sylvie369

Wow. I ordered two XBee pro units from Mouser, three of Martin's SIP boards, and the parts to populate the board from Digikey. They all arrived on the same day, Thursday, and I soldered the boards together yesterday afternoon. I'm pretty much a novice at this, but all three of the boards work, and just now I programmed my BS2pe to talk through the XBees with my BS2 board, and it works perfectly, quickly, and reliably.

I did try to have the BS2 talk with a 2px last night, and I couldn't get that to work. They knew that they were trying to talk to each other (judging by the LEDs on the Selma boards), but I never got the right data, and only rarely any data at all. I'm almost certain it was a baudrate problem. I was using 84 on the BS2, and 240 on the 2px, which should be 9600 8N1 True on both boards, I think, but that didn't do it. But the moment I used the 2 and the 2pe (84 on both), I was up and running.

I'm elated - these are great units.

Martin Hebel

What timing! Glad everything work for you!

They are fun units. Now you have to move on to XBee seres 2 for true mesh networking and routing :P

-Martin

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SelmaWare Solutions - StampPlot GUI for controllers, XBee and Propeller Application Boards

Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Electronic Systems Technologies

sylvie369

Martin Hebel said...
What timing! Glad everything work for you!

They are fun units. Now you have to move on to XBee seres 2 for true mesh networking and routing :P

-Martin

Well, I'm trying to use them for something simpler - telemetry from my high power rockets. I've been able to set up the Parallax 433 MHz transmitters/receivers to send GPS and temperature data, but I'm not getting the kind of range I'll need. I'm hoping that with the XBee Pro units I'll be able to get good data throughout the flight on rockets going up to about maybe 3000 feet. I just did a little range test, putting the transmitting unit into a Tupperware container and out in my car about 100 feet away, and still had no problem receiving data here on my kitchen table inside my apartment. That's promising. When I've got students to work with me later this week we'll try to get some kind of grip on the full range of the units.

I also figured out my problem with the 2px system - I was looking at the wrong color blue when I was reading the Baudrate tables. The correct code for the 2px at 9600 8N1 True is 396. When I got that right, it worked right away.

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