XBee RawDevice

The XBee RawDevice exposes all the terminals of an XBee module. Usually, you create this Device when the XBee is a module with all of its I/O exposed. However, any XBee based device can be added as a RawDevice. In this case, all the terminals on the device will be exposed. This may be what you want if you are dealing with a new design or want to get into the innards of an existing device.

XBee RawDevice Terminals

The terminals on a RawDevice fall into two groups. The first group, DIN and DOUT, are the serial port pins of the XBee. Anything on the DOUT terminal will be sent out the XBee's DOUT serial port pin. Anything the XBee receives from its serial port DIN pin will show up on its DIN terminal. Terminals DIO0 - DIO12 are general purpose I/O pins. These are configured using AT commands.

XBee RawDevice Installation

To install a RawDevice, the XBee device must be joined into an existing XBee network (which the Virtual Wiring system is a part of), or the device must be wired to a USB port on the Virtual Wiring system. Once joined or wired, create a RawDevice by running the RawDevice Script. The parameters for the RawDevice Script are:

• port_location: the port_location of whatever wired device the system owns in the network (usually a Coordinator's port_location). If there is only one XBee network for the system, this parameter can be set to nil.

• address: the 64 bit network address of the device. The network address uniquely identifies the XBee device. Typically, the address is found on a paper (serial number) label affixed to the device. It is also in the device's SH and SL registers, and it shows up in the return value from an AT ND (node detect) command. Network addresses are written in hex, are 16 characters long, and often look like "0013a200406b0263", where the lower digits are device specific. To enter a network address as an address parameter, start with the 16 character network address, strip off any leading zeros, and append "0x" to the beginning.

Example

To add a RawDevice with ID "raw_device" and network address 0013a200406b0263 to a system which is wired to a Coordinator Device at port_location "/dev/ttyUSB0", run the RawDevice Script with the following parameters:

address: 0x13a200406b0263
id: "raw_device"
port_location: "/dev/ttyUSB0"

Note: the port_location parameter can be set to nil, if the system owns only one XBee network.