Great deal on Xbee Series 1 (I think) U.S. Only

[budude]

Has anyone actually confirmed that these work with the Renards? I don't have Dirkmeister board built yet so haven't been able to try them out yet other than upgrading them on the explorer board.

[dirknerkle]

Has anyone actually confirmed that these work with the Renards? I don't have Dirkmeister board built yet so haven't been able to try them out yet other than upgrading them on the explorer board.

Did you upgrade them to 10E6 or later firmware? If so, they should be fine.
...and... happy birthday, too!

[budude]

I upgraded my two to 10ED - but - I don't have any way to test them yet with live traffic. I figured before we buy out this guys store of them that someone should verify these old guys work OK. I'm planning to use mine for my LEDTriks so my application will be a little different.

Oh - and thanks!

[CaptKirk]

Waiting for my explorer and sockets before I can try.

[Lefserev]

I just ordered mine today. They should be here this weekend. If no one else gives any confirmation, I'll probably be able to provide an update.

[rjchu]

Ok, my 7 arrived today (paid $8.25/ea plus the $2 and change shipping) and I was eventually able to get all 7 of the working. I tested them as transmitters using Vixen to a Ren48LSD that I still have powered on in the garage wired to RGBW SuperStrips under my roof eves. I got some pretty choppy fades and had to hold them up in the air at times but I'm chalking this up to the fact that we know these guys make pretty bad transmitters. I'll be using them ultimately as receivers with one of my XBee Pros with a 9db antenna on it so I'm not too worried - I just wanted to see if they worked period and it seems as though the do.

Now, some details...

I couldn't get XCTU to talk to these things at all at first. After a little Googling I found these http://todigi.blogspot.com/2010/05/x...rom-grave.html steps online, followed them and was able to revive and firmware flash all 7 of these radios to version 10E6 and do my testing. For those of you with XBee Explorer boards, like me, that do not have a reset button as referenced in these instructions, taking a small piece of wire and momentarily shorting RST to GND on the back of the Explorer board will do the trick - note though, that I only had to do this for 2 of the 7 XBees, the other 5 started their firmware downloads and programming on their own a second or two after seating them into the Explorer board.

Hope this helps, good luck everyone,

-joni-

[Xenia]

Joni,

Most of the time when you get that type of error, the X-ctu or the XBee is not set to the default of 9600,8.n.1. Generally if you try different speeds i.e. 57600 or other parameters changes you will discover what the xbee settings are. Once in you can reset them to default , flash the new firmware and then set them to DIYC parameters. Anyway, this mightl keep you from having to "hot Wire" a reset. By the way just as a reminder once you set these to DIYC parameters and if you try to read them with the X-CTU default settings, they will act like they are not working. You must set the X-CTU to 57600,8,n,1 or 2 depending on how you set them.

[Xenia]

Finished my first two RenardSS24's yesterday and hooked it up with the XBees. All five of the XBees order worked fine and made the flashy blinky go. I am going to have to get with Dirk or someone because my Ren W rev 6 boards don't want to work. I used Xbees that worked in the snap-in boards. Cat 5 from rev6 to J2 on Renard. Jumpered a cat 5 single wire from J3 left to J3 on rev 6 board for power led was blinking. took the shunt off of JP2 on the Renard board. Shunt was on the RX jumper. Not Sure what else to try.

Just a note that I figured out the problem on the Rev6 boards and they are working now. Evidently C4 is not an optional capacitor.

[Mudsculpter]

Just as a reminder This thread is in the "great deals" category and you might want to post RenW issues in the appropriate area to get more eyes on the problem.

[Xenia]

Sorry, the main point was that my five XBees from this source all worked.