Hello.
I am looking for the specified voltage and current for this XBee Explorer Serial board. WRL-13225. I see on the schematic and the board itself that the input voltage is 5-16V, but I can’t find anything talking about the specified current draw. Is there a data sheet for this board? Or can someone tell me what the current is?
Thanks.
Voltage is 5-16 volts as marked on the board. Unfortunately we never tested for current, but I estimate it’s less than 250mA and probably less than 75mA.
Raising the input voltage above 5V will increase the current draw since there is a voltage regulator on the board that has to burn the extra voltage. (Board will use more current as voltage increases, stick with 5 volts for the lowest possible current draw.)
The board itself shouldn’t consume much current, the XBee you attach will be a bulk of the current drawn by the board. If you add 50mA to whatever your XBee needs, that’s probably a good worst case current estimate.
TS-Chris,
Any estimation of the current draw with the XBee? I’m somewhat new with XBee’s and not super familiar with them yet.
Again, it depends on the XBee you’re using (there are many different tpyes) but I estimate it to be less than 250mA.
Check the documentation for the XBee you’re using to get a ballpark idea what the XBee needs and add 50mA to that and that will give you a worst case value to work with.
I’ve used these with a 12 volt supply and I’ve never noticed the regulator to be even a little warm. That said, I don’t really drive them too hard and they’re usually just idling.
The current XBee 3 Pro has a maximum current draw of 135 mA at full transmit power, 40mA for non-Pro:
[Digi spec page](Zigbee 3 RF Module | Digi XBee 3 Zigbee 3.0 | Digi International)
Follow-up question:
Could I use the RS232 as an input for the XBee? For example, have an external sensor with RS232 capability, can this board gather the sensor’s data and send it elsewhere over an XBee network?
Not directly into an XBee, no.
XBee uses 0 - 3.3 volts for it’s serial input where RS-232 level signals can be as high as 15 volts and as low as negative 15 volts. Voltages above 3.3 or below zero will destroy the serial pins on an XBee, that’s the whole point of the XBee Explorer Serial. It’s job is to convert that +/- 15 volt signal to a 0 to 3.3 volt signal as well as supply 3.3 volt power to the XBee.
If you’re asking if you can take RS-232 data and send it via XBee then yes, you can do that with the XBee Explorer Serial but you need to have it connected to your RS-232 device properly.
nwseefeldt:
Follow-up question:Could I use the RS232 as an input for the XBee? For example, have an external sensor with RS232 capability, can this board gather the sensor’s data and send it elsewhere over an XBee network?
Yes, I’ve connected two RS232 devices using the XBee2 & 3 with using 802.15.4 firmware and the SparkFun serial Explorer boards. I had them set up so the pair the operates like a wireless cable on a one-to-one basis.
Yes, I’ve connected two RS232 devices using the XBee2 & 3 with using 802.15.4 firmware and the SparkFun serial Explorer boards. I had them set up so the pair the operates like a wireless cable on a one-to-one basis.
I’m trying to do this right now but my current setup of my XBees is a mesh with a coordinator and routers etc.
When I send commands, they are sent as frames so I always get the junk at the start and end of the command out of the 232 D-sub
Do you have to pair XBees 1-2-1 to be able to just send and receive the exact command?
In which case I’m going to need another device (or program the XBees with micropython) to strip out the junk before it goes out of the D-sub… ?
I’ve mostly used them with the 802.15.4 firmware and one-to-one. Then, you can set the ‘destination address’ to each other.
I’ve seen the junk you describe during a project where I was using a Digi XBee to Ethernet gateway. I asked Digi support about the extra characters and here is the reply:
The module uses API mode which is a Hex based frame for all communications. That is how the XBee talks to the Gateways Processor and its firmware. If you were to use Python and the Python Engine to collect the data and forward it to where ever you want, you would not see that extra API data in your packets. You would be able to see just the data.
Exactly what I was after, thanks