I'm trying to set two xbees to talk to each other. One is in an Arduino Xbee Shield and the other on an XBee USB Explorer connected to my computer. To set up a simple point to point connection it looks like just the ID, DL, and MY need to be configured. But on either xbee, when I enter the ATMY0 (any number at all), it responds with ERROR. Yet just about every example I've found on the net uses the DL and MY configs to tell the xbees whom to talk to. Why would I not be able to set the MY address on the xbees? I've tried restoring to factory defaults, but that doesn't help.
Please, any hints, links, help at all will be greatly appreciated, as I'm basically at the end of my rope in figuring this out.
You are probably using a ZigBee (ZNet 2.5 or ZB Pro) XBee. The 16-bit MY address in these radios is always automatically assigned by the coordinator and cannot be set manually.
Does this mean I need to install the digi zigbee software and set up one of the devices as a coordinator and another as an endpoint? Or can this be done with AT commands (although if it can, I haven't been able to figure it out).
I've spent hours googling for configuration code and come up with nothing showing how to set up and use a Pro version.
Of course the other way to go about this is to use the 802.15.4 radios, which would probably be much easier for you to configure. Using ZigBee when you really need 802.15.4 is high on my common mistakes list, precisely because most projects don't need the complexities of forming self-healing mesh networks: http://www.faludi.com/projects/common-xbee-mistakes/
It is my understanding that the XBee pro can do simple point to poinit by setting the DL and MY addresses. But both my Xbee Pro's return ERROR when MY is set. So I'm guessing I need to do the coordinator/router set up, which seems really tedious when I only have two devices (not that I've been able to figure it out, or else I'd do it, tedious or not )
The SparkFun description is a little misleading. That radio is ZNet 2.5 so you are indeed using ZigBee, which is why you get an ERROR when you try to set the MY address.
Sparkfun links to the correct User Manual where you can learn more about ZigBee addressing and such.
If your project doesn't need ZigBee, I'd consider exchanging these radios for regular 802.15.4 ones. Just to keep things simple.
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