djb_rh:
One thing I noticed with my two working Xbees is that if you use default Router and Coordinator destination addresses (zero on the Router so it talks to the Coordinator, and FFFF on the Coordinator to broadcast), I could NOT chat both directions. I could only get text to go from the Router to the Coordinator, but not the other direction. But when I switched back to hard coded destination addresses, text flowed both ways (with NO other changes to the XBees or the terminal emulators). Is that normal?
I sure would think I'd have noticed if I couldn't transmit in both directions. Is everything set to factory default values?
And that doesn't address communication using i/o pins. Should what I describe (and what the Series1 articles I link describe) "just work" with a Coordinator AT and a Router AT? Because in one instructional video I found, it seemed to imply anyway that one was going to need to be API and one AT, but I forget which it said. I think the one with the switch was supposed to be API and the one with the LED could be AT. Something about serial I/O being fine with both AT, but if you wanted I/O from input pins then it was going to need to send it using API frames. I'm still a bit fuzzy on that part.
The 802.15.4 modules (fka Series 1) have a facility called "I/O line passing" that the ZB modules (fka Series 2) do not have. If you do not already have them, get the product manuals here and here.
The ZB modules can send I/O data sample frames at regular intervals. To receive these, the receiving node must be in API mode. Also, remote AT commands can be sent to control the I/O pins on a remote module (among other things). This requires the module sending the remote commands to be in API mode.
And so even if you are saying pin based I/O should work based on your article (one Coordinator AT with a single pin as "digital input" and one Router AT with the same pin as "digital output HIGH"), is there any chance I hosed my two XBees, or should they work just like the series 1's in the article above? By that I mean with the same "circuit" on each end, I know the setup is different.
I am not saying that. Whether your modules are hosed, I cannot say but certainly there is some chance that they are. The pinouts between the two types of modules are only mostly the same, so I would certainly not wire one type of module into a circuit designed for the other without studying the product manuals and the circuit long and hard.