XBee Shield and USB

Wireless & IoT
1

If I have my XBee in a shield, hooked to TX/RX, do I have to remove the XBee (or shield) in order to hook up to the USB jack?

I understand that they couldn’t be used simultaneously, I am talking about if the XBee is silent - namely, I want to do data transfer over the XBee, but I’m not planning on bootloading wirelessly, so if I want to upload a new program, I need to connect to the USB port.

My concern is that the XBee DOUT port (which should just be sitting low) would be tied to the FTDI TX pin. When the FTDI goes high, it will be a dead short to the XBee DOUT - and in the sparkfun shield, there doesn’t appear to be any protection against this.

Thoughts?

thanks

ps - pins 2 and 3 are already taken.

2

Hi,

I think I am following exactly what you are asking. And I think that you are correct. From my experience you will need to remove the xbee from the shield to upload a new sketch, especially if you don’t want to mess with wireless bootloading. This is also true with the Xbee Explorer Regulated. It will completely freeze the upload process to the Arduino until you remove the xbee from its socket.

Thanks,

Tim

3

Unless you’re running a Mega which has 4 serial uarts then yes, you need to free the serial up before uploading.

4

I’m able to upload new sketches to my arduino while the Xbee module is in place. What I do is slide the switch over to pins to 2 and 3 setting. This seems to free up the serial port for communicating between the arduino board and the computer. After the sketch is uploaded, I unplug the serial (USB) cable, flip the little switch back to UART and I can communicate wirelessly again. Hope that makes sense.