There’s been a lot of talk all over about Xbees getting bricked, using X-CTU, an RS-232 X-bee explorer, setting the firmware wrong, not being able to communicate, etc, and sad, very dead Xbees. Well today, after digging around for 6 hours, I finally found the procedure, right on DIGI’s web site! Below is mostly copied from Digi…
Sometimes you have trouble talking to an XBee - perhaps the baud rate is unknown, or the firmware within it disables the serial port. If you work with the XBee AIO or DIO adapters, you will probably need to use this procedure.
You can help XCTU reflash the XBee by manually activating the XBee Bootloader.
Open an X-CTU Terminal Window
Change Baud to 115200
check DTR, uncheck RTS, check Break - NOTE on these pins: Checking DTR forces the DTR pin low (to ground), unchecking RTS lets it go high(+3.3V) and finally “Break” forces the DIn pin low (Gnd) Your programming board needs to support DTR and RTS, or you might be able to do this manually (untested)
Reset the Xbee by jumping the reset (RST) pin to ground, or press the button if you’ve got a devboard - Note this is NOT the same as the Arduino reset button.
Uncheck Break
Click mouse on the Terminal Window, then Type a ‘B’ and hit the carriage return (the ‘B’ must be CAPS)
The XBee should return the Bootloader Menu that looks something like this:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/developer/imag … rminal.jpg
Screen shot of XCTU
Without resetting or power cycling the XBee go to the Modem Config Tab
Check ‘Always Update Firmware’ & select firmware you wish to load
Hit Write
If this procedure does not work, then perhaps your XBee (or development board) is damaged.
On the other hand, as I understand it, lots of people already know about this trick, but once it’s figured out, it’s not written about… so here it is. My xbees are back in business!