The ZigBee Project

As you all know we  received the  XBee Starter kit with the 2.5 dev kit. The starter kit was ordered in Sweden where I am located. I ordered it from Farnell (link in Swedish), the price is 2017.50 SEK (≈ € 190, $260) including tax and shipping. In US you can order it directly from Digi for $129. The Starter Kit only works for Windows.

The Starter kit contains:

• 2 XBee 1mW chips with antenna
• XBee firmware programmer (USB)
• XBEe firmware programmer (RS-232)
• CD with software (useless)
• USB cable
• RS-232 cable
• RS-232 loopback adapter

So first thing I tried was to just use the xbee modules as they were intended with included firmware. That worked quite well, almost everywhere in my apartment, except between the most far cornerns, but it was just 2 modules, no relay or anything, and four 20cm (≈8 inch) stone walls in between. So I was pleased with the range-test.

Next on my list was to actually try to compile and run my custom firmware (just a simple program to flash some LEDs).

Below is the stuff I needed to install and it’s not as simple as just installing some packages, I had to tweak it, renaming files and things to get it to work.

• Freescale CodeWarrior for HC08/Coldfire (CW_MCU_V6_2_EVAL.exe)
• Freescale BeeKit (BeeKitDownloadPackage.zip)
• Digi tweaks for BeeKit (1011.zip)
• FTDI Driver for windows (40002636_A.zip)
• X-CTU (40002637_c.exe)

Installations:

• FTDI driver for windows, insert the USB cable to the programmer and install a custom driver from where ever you unzipped the driver files.
• X-CTU, just install.
• CodeWarrior, just follow instructions.
• BeeKit, just install it in it’s predefined installations path, do not change it.

Now to the more complicated stuff, the Digi patch for BeeKit, 1011.zip is designed for an old BeeKit, so it’s not compatible with the new version, there are some instructions in a pdf that you have to follow.

When you compile in this environment, the first time in every project, it complains about a missing file, it’s not missing, just not copied into the right location by the BeeKit builder so it has to be moved by hand and added manualy to every project before first compile.

Now the only thing left is just building some custom firmware, how hard could that be :D

Kenth out.