Hi, I am a total newbie which is trying to understand how to operate with Arduino.
Before buying the parts I need to start playing with it, I'd like to know if this GPRS module:
http://www.cooking-hacks.com/index.php/arduino-gprs-module.html
and one of this two XBee shields:
Thanks in advance.
That will work. the GPRS module of libelium(ive got it) only uses port 0 and 1 (RX&TX). On almost all of the xbee shields you can choose pins.
T
Take a look at this:
I'm using the same technology with the Xbee Pro.
Thanks for the answers.
I'd like to use this library http://code.google.com/p/xbee-arduino/ to communicate to the modules using the XBee API mode.
This library uses the hardwareSerial library of Arduino.
If I change the tx-rx pins of the XBee module, how will I be able to use the above xbee-arduino library?
I checked the constructor of hardwareSerial class, it has many parameters, but there are no comments and I cannot understand if some of them are used to specify the tx and rx pins:
HardwareSerial(ring_buffer *rx_buffer,
volatile uint8_t *ubrrh, volatile uint8_t *ubrrl,
volatile uint8_t *ucsra, volatile uint8_t *ucsrb,
volatile uint8_t *udr,
uint8_t rxen, uint8_t txen, uint8_t rxcie, uint8_t udre, uint8_t u2x);
That will work. the GPRS module of libelium(ive got it) only uses port 0 and 1 (RX&TX). On almost all of the xbee shields you can choose pins.
Wrong. The XBee shields are hard-wired to RX and TX (pins 0 and 1).
I checked the constructor of hardwareSerial class, it has many parameters, but there are no comments and I cannot understand if some of them are used to specify the tx and rx pins:
They are not. The Hardware part of the name means that the pins are hardwired.
Some updates and discoveries: this page has an interesting database of arduino shields and the pins they use: http://shieldlist.org/.
It has been very useful to me (still I do not understand how to retrieve the busy-pin information from schematics on my own).
As for the coexistence of GPRS and XBee module (not the shield), it only requires to connect the tx/rx pin of the latter to any digital I/O pin of arduino and use the software serial library, as suggested in the previous posts.
However I was a bit concerned about the inability to use the xbee-arduino library (it is a library to use the XBee modules in API mode, GitHub - andrewrapp/xbee-arduino: Arduino library for communicating with XBee radios in API mode) which is based on the hardware serial library.
Surprisingly, Andrew Rapp, the author of the above xbee library (many thanks) recently included the ability to use the NewSoftwareSerial library (NSS, NewSoftSerial | Arduiniana) in its code.
It is still untested, as you can read here (Added Example for sending data structures through the XBee Adapter. by Reiuiji · Pull Request #1 · andrewrapp/xbee-arduino · GitHub, last post), but it is a great integration to add flexibility to use API mode and any pin for the serial communication.