Arduino Fio v2

Archive New Product Ideas
1

I feel that an update to the FIO is needed. Here are the things that I would change.

The biggest one is the change the orientation of the Xbee board. This is clearly a layout error if you are using the XBee with the Chip antenna. See page 16 of the Xbee’s User manual (http://ftp1.digi.com/support/documentat … 0976_F.pdf) If using some of the other antenna options it is not the bigg of a deal.

Next one is there are not mounting holes and everything is fairly close to the edge of the board. These 2 problem combined make it difficult to mount.

Some of the Xbee lines are not easily accessible if you wanted to use the available Digital IO from the Xbee. Like the pin 20 on the Xbee can be used in commissioning the Xbee onto a Zigbee mesh. See page 78 and 79 of the User’s Guide.

My last change that is about the power regulator. If you wanted to use the 50mw versions of the Xbee, there is really no way that you can do so with the current FIO. I am not sure the best way of fixing this one.

2

Here’s some of my suggestions for a Fio v2 (copied from my post on the product page):

Overall things changes to this board that would really sell me on it:

  1. Power regulator that can guarantee to fully power an XBee Pro, and enough left over to drive some sensors.

  2. A serial switch like on the SparkFun XBee Wireless Shield. From the description on that shield "The serial pins (DIN and DOUT) of the XBee are connected through an SPDT switch, which allows you to select a connection to either the UART pins (D0, D1) or any digital pins on the Arduino (D2 and D3 default). "

  3. Perf/Proto area

  4. Mounting holes! :smiley:

  5. Reverse the sides that the usb/battery connector and the XBee socket are on.