Unable to Communicate w/XBee

Wireless & IoT
1

Hello everyone, first time on the SparkFun boards. Sadly, my first post will be a plea for help, but I promise after that I’ll try and haunt it as often as I can to help others :slight_smile:

I recently picked up [XBee 1mW Wire Antenna - Series 1 (802.15.4) along with [XBee Explorer Regulated and finally the [FTDI Cable 5V VCC-3.3V I/O cable to configure it.

My problem is that I can’t get X-CTU or PuTTY to talk to the XBee using the FTDI cable and the explorer board. The power light comes on the board, but DIN and DOUT remain unlit at all. I’m in the dark on how to test what’s not working. I got two XBees for my project and neither work, so I doubt it’s that (unless it was a faulty batch).

Does anyone see something obvious that is incompatible here? At this point I’ve gotten quite frustrated and I’m at my wits end. Any insight is greatly appreciated.](FTDI Cable 5V VCC-3.3V I/O - DEV-09717 - SparkFun Electronics)](SparkFun XBee Explorer Regulated - WRL-11373 - SparkFun Electronics)](XBee 1mW Wire Antenna - Series 1 (802.15.4) - WRL-08665 - SparkFun Electronics)

2

some of Sparkfun’s XBee boards have a diode in series on the serial data line going into the XBee, as a feeble and incorrect attempt to drop 5V to 3.3V. They continued to sell this flawed design for a long, long time.

Or you have have some other issue. XCTU should work, assuming you’re choosing the correct COM port.

3

Did you install the ftdi driver?

4

I discovered my error shortly after submitting my post, but it was waiting for moderator approval.

After more research I found that DIN and DOUT are swapped in order to plug it in directly to the Arduino Pro’s FTDI headers. After making a small connection plug from XBee<->FTDI cable it worked as expected.

After this, however, I found I wasn’t able to upgrade the XBee’s firmware without bridging (I think?) D08 and RTS on the XBee. After that I was able to rock and roll.