Xbee #1 push button will not turn on LED on Xbee #2

I have spent the 3 months (on and off) trying to get my two Xbee's to preform a simple action. Xbee #1 is a transmitter with a button attached to DIO0 pin. Xbee #2 is the reciver with an LED attached to DIO0 pin. When I press the button, the LED should light up. But it doesn't. Simple tutorial. But it does not work at all for me.

In the last 2 days I have been though 20+ tutorials, read the manual, setup both Xbee's in various configurations, including but not limited to complete factory defaults with no luck at all. Including the one from Digi (Examples & Guides | Digi International and Examples & Guides | Digi International )

Both Xbee's are on the same channel (3332), and will respond (by way of onboard tx/rx leds on sheilds) that they get serial between each other. I have even had some succes when the button is pressed, the RSSI light comes on on the Receiver Xbee. Both units are a Series 1 Xbee.
One is attached to a Sparkfun usb shield (XBee Explorer USB - WRL-08687 - SparkFun Electronics) and the other is powered on a SparkFun Xbee arduino sheild (SparkFun XBee Shield - WRL-12847 - SparkFun Electronics) The arduino is doing nothing other than powering the Xbee sheild. The attached LED is on a bread board.

I have it wired just like these attached photos. http://i.imgur.com/6qkdmBA.jpg http://i.imgur.com/wKDCKj7.jpg. (other than the reciever with LED is powered via an arduino)

To answer all the silly questions,

  • Yes I have updated the firmware
  • Yes the Trasmitter Xbee DIO0 pin is set to (3) Digital In
  • Yes the Reciever Xbee DIO0 pin is set to (4) Digital out LOW
  • Yes they are both on ATID 3332
  • Yes I have tried setting ATIU (I/O Output Enable) to both Enabled and Disable on both, in all 4 ways, and no change
  • Yes I have tried setting ATIC DIO Change Detect to 1 on both.
  • Yes I have tried changing ATDL and ATMY Destination Address Low and 16-Bit Source Address to the default 0, and to separate values in their respective slots. .
  • Yes I have set ATIA I/O Input Address to both the default FFFFFFFFFFFF and to the Transmitter Xbee's address. (0x1234)
  • Yes I understand that the numbers above need to be in decimal form of hex. So my Transmitter Xbee address is 0x1234 or 4660
  • Yes I have googled, bing'ed, youtube'd and yahoo'ed for answers. All the tutorials I get have slightly different configurations, or did not include the configuration settings. And or they were on the older XCTU software (Gray Windows 95 like format) And I am using the newer 6.2.0 version.
  • Yes I have the older version of XCTU (version 5.2.8.6) and followed along with tutorials with no luck.
  • Yes I have tried changing the two xbee's so that the Transmitter xbee is the receiver, and the receiver is the transmitting one
  • Yes the Xbee Receiver has enough power to power the LED. I have set the DIO0 pin to Digital Out High, and the LED will light.
  • and Yes, the LED is in the correct direction for signal flow.
  • Yes I have tried with other DIO pins. In fact I have LEDs on DIO pins 0 thru 4, all set to different settings for purpose of testing.
  • Yes, when I send random text via the command prompt on the Transmitter Xbee, I will see the Dout Light flicker for each character typed.
  • When ATIC DIO Change Detect is set to 1. When I push or release the button, I will see the RSSI LED light up on the Recieiving Xbee for 4 seconds-ish
  • When I push the reset button on the Recieving Xbee, The RSSI LED will light up for a few seconds and I will get initialization done. on the Tranmistter Xbee

What is it that I am doing wrong? Why am I unable to get this simple action to work?

  • a very frustrated tinkerer

They are both Series 1 Xbee's (XBee 802.15.4)