I have a crude setup that takes pulses from a gas meter (remote), connects to a remote XBee Series 2, goes through an XBee router and finally ends up at an XBee coordinator connected through pins 0 and 1(TX/RX) on a Uno Rev 3.
It has been a struggle to get this far, what with ZigBee, EEPROM's, RTC's, SD's etc. However, it works.
As it is collecting real-time data, I don't want to mess it up by tinkering with it in real-time.
Is there a way of connecting a second Arduino to run alongside, taking the XBee frame data from the first Arduino, and allowing development of the sketch on the second Arduino?
Unless you're already sending the data in broadcast mode, which seems unlikely, I can't see a way to do it without additional hardware. You could get a sniffer though: desert home sniffer
If you can stand to lose some data, you could setup a software serial instance on the existing arduino and echo everything you get from the xBee to it. Shouldn't need much downtime and then you can use your second arduino to read & process that data at your leisure. Probably worth having that arduino use software serial to read the data so that hardware serial is available for debugging.
This is getting into deep water for me. I'll have a look at the serial software route. Anything doing on the I2C or SPI route? The main debugging stuff is on the XBee side as I have analogue and digital data coming in. If all else fails, I'll have to set up a second XBee/Arduino system and simulate pulses and analogue at the remote end. I just wondered if there was a smarter way of doing it as essentially I have managed to get the real data from outside to inside where it's needed. A lot to learn for a few pulses, but ZigBee has a lot going for it.
Given that I assume you're talking to the xBee at 9600 baud, software serial should be fine - no need to go to I2C or SPI unless you want to gain experience using them. Note though, that I've never used either so my advice may be tainted by that
I've been doing a bit more digging around with software serial and should have another Uno on by tomorrow (others all tied up).
Just a thought, I have a Mega sitting around doing nothing. I might transfer the non-tinkering sketch to the Mega and have a look at using it's hardware ports and connect the Uno to tinker with.
Having to learn all this the hard way - no formal training with MCU's (PLC's, yes) and the wrong side of retirement age.
I have a Mega sitting around doing nothing. I might transfer the non-tinkering sketch to the Mega and have a look at using it's hardware ports and connect the Uno to tinker with
Sounds good. If you can scrape up another Mega, you can forget about software serial.
