BeagleBone Black with Skywire Cape using xbee

Question

I have a beaglebone black and trying to use an xbee module with it.

I've gotten the xbee to work in AT mode with communications but I require my project to use API mode. I've found several frameworks online that I'm trying to leverage such as this one: https://github.com/nioinnovation/python-xbee

I've created a sample program to just try and receive messages as a starting point for my project. I'm using XCTU with a usb dongle to try and send frames to my beaglebone but no messages are being received when I try broadcasting my created messages.

Is there anything obvious that I'm missing? I can't figure out why the beaglebone is unable to receive messages. I think it's something to do with the channel but the framework I'm using doesn't seem to support searching channels for the coordinator that I have connected to my laptop.

A follow up question, are there any other frameworks that are good options that you might suggest I research and look into?

Answer 1

Which XBee modules are you working with and what firmware version is installed?

Comments

I have XBee S2-Pro's. The one I'm using through XCTU is a coordinator API running 21A7, while the one on the beaglebone black is running router API 21A7.

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Can you verify these two versions of code again. Especially your router's firmware version? What you listed is two coordinators API versions which will not talk to each other.

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Sorry, the router is running 23A7, coordinator 21A7. My mistake

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Have you verified that your Router is associated to your Coordinator by checking the CH, ID and OP commands? If not, try doing a local network reset on your router to force it to re-associate with your coordinator.

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I looked into this and confirmed that all settings are the same between the devices. They linked automatically when I have both running in my XCTU. When I moved the router back to my beaglebone I was still unable to receive data. Could this be a framework issue?

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Most certainly could be. You see if it was a radio issue, then you should not be able to communicate with XCTU.  But I would suggest verifying that both module have the same CH and OP values.

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Sorry, I did confirm that both those values are the same on the devices. I didn't mention that in the last message.

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Is this a programmable module? If it is not, I would suggest talking with the manufacture of the Beagle Bone system to see what is wrong with the Code.  It could be as simple as needing API mode 1 or 2.

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I changed the program to API mode 2 and things have started to work. Flow control is set to the default settings. Looks like it was just a character escaping issue. Also had to explicitly state in the xbee python framework I was using that it was using escaped mode.

Thanks for all your help