Hello all!
I was just brought on to a project were we are testing the capabilities of using two Xbee Pro 900s to help communicate between a weather station out in a field to a Raspberry Pi that connected at a farmers warehouse/packing area. I recently purchased a Xbee Explorer USB (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11812) for connection to the Raspberry Pi, an Xbee Explorer Serial (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9111) for connection to the weather station, and two Xbee Pro 900 RPSMA modules (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9099). The USB Explorer and the two Pro 900s were bought directly from Sparkfun, while the Explorer Serial was purchased from a local Sparkfun dealer.
I’ve been able to connect with the two Pro 900 modules using the USB Explorer and XCTU but 9 times out of 10 using either of the radio modules I cannot get the Serial Explorer to be found. I do not understand why say if I leave my Explorer sit over night it will connect once the next morning with XCTU while the night before it would not connect at all and if I restart my computer and try to connect again after it worked it will not connect again. I’ve looked over the comments for the product here on the Sparkfun site as well as other sites on the web and the only thing I can think is an issue is the USB to Serial cable that I am using though that wouldn’t explain to me why it works sometimes and why it doesn’t work others. The drivers are up to date, and I even have tried the older drivers because they seemed more stable. Also there is power going to Serial Explorer and it should be more then enough. When this is to be deployed it will be connected to a regulator between a solar panel and battery power but at the moment for testing I am just using a 12V 1.5A cable like you could buy from Sparkfun.
Once again both radio modules are recognized when I use the USB Explorer but then both are not found while using the Serial Explorer. I apologize if this has been asked before but I didn’t see an answer anywhere here on the forum for this so I figured I’d ask. Thanks in advance for any help that you may be able to give me and if you need any more info from me please let me know and I’ll try to be more clear or specific if need be.