XBee is a brand of small (about 3cm2), low power radio frequency transceiver boards manufactured by Digi. The modules are great for adding easy radio control in a project because the advanced protocols can be setup easily and are very robust. They range in price and transmitting power, but generally are around $25 for 1mW (about 100m outdoor) to $40 for 60mW (about 1.5km outdoor) output. This is great for controlling your projects from a distance, for example in a RC car. You can also program a microcontroller wirelessly, too.
Caution: Beware of the voltage!
XBees run on 3.3 volts, unlike the common 5 volts used by most microcontrollers, so it requires a bit of regulating to use with the Arduino. But this doesn’t just mean the power voltage must be converted… all signals (like serial from the Arduino) use 5 volts and must be converted.
Here are some (hopefully) useful tutorials to get you started:
Check out Sparkfun’s introduction to the XBee.
This is an interesting blog post about converting the Arduino’s 5 volts to 3.3 volts for the XBee.
The XBee can be used to wireless update the code on an Arduino. Ladyada shows us how.
You can program an AVR with an XBee. Here’s a Sparkfun tutorial about that.
We’ll have our XBees in soon, and we hope to make them useful for controlling our RC car.
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