designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

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florinc
 
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designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by florinc »

Hi,
I am trying to follow the tutorial "Wireless Arduino programming/serial link". It seems that, on the receiver side, AD3 of XBee is used a designated "reset" and has to be connected to the Arduino board. That would make the XBee adapter not fully pluggable/detachable.

I don't know if this was asked/suggested here, but is there an elegant solution to avoid having an extra wire sticking from the adapter? Like connecting this wire to one of the header pins? I would really want to be able to plug/unplug the adapter, without worrying about an extra wire.

My brute solution would be to just cut one of the unused (by me) pins (3V, for example) and connect it to AD3.

Thanks.

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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by adafruit »

you could use, mm, CTS perhaps? i think thats an output FROM the xbee. should work. but then i dont know if you can use that adapter for uploading new firmware because the CTS line is needed (i think!)

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florinc
 
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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by florinc »

A belated thank you for your answer.

Now, I have a different problem I don't know how to explain/solve, and here it is:
I configured the 2 XBees as your (great) tutorial (Wireless Arduino programming/serial link) says, to the letter.
The XBees talk between them, back and forth. I have a sketch running on Arduino that sends (with Serial.print) a ping to the receiver (connected with the FTDI cable to USB). In Hyperterminal or other serial monitor, I can see the ping messages being received. The problem is that between these ping messages, there is (what I consider) garbage, a sequence of almost the same 4-5 characters, every 250 ms.
Before upgrading to version 10CD, my XBees were 1083 and I was able to run the same scenario fine (no extra characters between pings).
My suspicion was that the sender does some sort of automatic broadcasting for finding other nodes in the network, but this is just an assumption.
Any idea? Did you experience something similar?

PS Maybe it is worth specifying in the above mentioned tutorial, that, for the XBee firmware upgrade, the Sparkfun FTDI breakout board DOES NOT work (and cannot work). It would save people some time and energy. For this reason I had to buy the FTDI cable recently.

Thanks again.
FlorinC

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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by adafruit »

well what are the characters in hex?

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florinc
 
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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by florinc »

I was wrong, it's not just a few characters (as hyperterminal shows just the displayable ones), but a lot more.
Here are a few screenshots from x-ctu terminal and hyperterminal:
Image
Image
Image

A pattern can be observed in the hyperterminal, but it may not make sense. Could it be noise/interference from other 2.4GHz devices I have around (like the wi-fi adapter)?

The XBees are close to each other (10 cms).

Also, the "range test" in x-ctu shows a failure rate greater than 97% (just 3% success).

I will try reverting back to original firmware (1083), to check if that still works.

Thanks again.
FlorinC

PS Here is the screenshot of the "kind-of-working" version:
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaB ... 038778/0#0

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opossum
 
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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by opossum »

florinc wrote:I was wrong, it's not just a few characters (as hyperterminal shows just the displayable ones), but a lot more.
Use this font with Hyperterminal to reveal many of the control and 0x80+ characters.

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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by adafruit »

oh you're using faludi's example
i dont know anything about that, sorry!

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florinc
 
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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by florinc »

No, no, no!
That was my first attempt, and it did not work (from the reset/upload perspective). I was pointing to that forum for the screenshot of hyperterminal only, in case you don't believe the communication worked fine at some point.

My current setup is the one described in your tutorial. But, since the upload did not work, I started to investigate and this is where I am now.
So, is my logic flawed here? Shouldn't the communication work well before I do reset/upload?

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florinc
 
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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by florinc »

oPossum, thanks for the tip, very useful.
Here is the screenshot:
Image

Other things I tried, with no change in behaviour:
- swapped the XBees;
- commented out my own Serial.print in the sketch (so that arduino does not emit anything anymore): garbage chars are still received while the sketch is running;
- baud rate of 9600, as well as 57600.

The red LED is on all the time.

Again, I should not expect the sketch upload to work, until I get the communication fixed, right?

Thanks again.
FlorinC

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Re: designated "reset" pin for Wireless Arduino programming

Post by adafruit »

show a screenshot of all the settings for -each- one in XCTU

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