I am working with the lilypad arduino mainboard, lilypad xbee breakout board with xbee 1mW wire antenna from Maxstream, and lilypad power supply http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc … ts_id=8466. When I have my mainboard and lilypad xbee breakout board connected to the lilypad power supply, I experience some power supply errors. The lilypad power supply does not source enough current to drive both the mainboard and the xbee board. When, I power my system using a voltage generator, everything works accordingly. Has anyone else had problems with lilypad power supply? I also measured that the xbee draw 45 - 50 mAh of current. My entire system should be well under 100 mAh. Also the lilypad power supply is perfectly capable of powering just the mainboard when the xbee is disconnected.
That XBee is only rated for max 3.4V, so it can’t be used with that power supply (5V). Hopefully you haven’t damaged it.
The easiest thing would be to run the Xbee & Lilypad Arduino from 3V or 3.3V. You could add a linear regulator after the 5V output from the Lilypad power supply, but it would be more efficient to replace the NCP1400 on the power supply with a 3V or 3.3V version. Farnell / Newark is the only place I can see that stocks them.
If you’re in the US, then Newark will slug you with a $20 handling fee, since it is actually carried by Farnell:
If you’re anywhere else, get it from Farnell directly, since they don’t charge a handling fee, even when it ships from their offices in a different country; they even do free shipping in some countries eg Australia (search for NCP1400ASN30T1G or NCP1400ASN33T1G). http://www.farnell.com
If you need 16MHz clock on the Arduino, it needs to run at 5V, and you’ll need to add extra circuitry (I don’t think the XBee has 5V tolerant I/O pins).
You are right, the xbee needs 3.3 V, but the lilypad breakout board takes care of that problem. Like the component you recommended, it has a similar voltage regulator which steps down the input from 5V to 3.3 V. Here is the schematic/circuit of the breakout board.
OK, I must have missed that. Does that mean the XBee does have 5V tolerant I/O after all?
Re your power supply issues, I know you said you’re using the 1mW XBee (which has a max current draw of 45-50mA), but if you used one of the more powerful units, it would exceed the power available…
