XBee USB Adapter UART Communication Board XBee Interface USB Interface Onboard Buttons/LEDs for Easy Testing,Program/Configure XBee Module

This is needed for my application to be able to have the UART pins to connect to the Teensy.

Works well, but the labelling for the UART pins is backwards, if you're connecting the module to an Arduino or any other microcontroller, usually you connect a modules Tx pin to the controllers Rx pin. Then the modules Rx pin connects to the controllers Tx pin. However with this module you need to connect Rx to Rx and Tx to Tx which is reverse from the standard and took a little bit for me to figure out so that's bit confusing. Other than that it works as advertised. For reference I'm using a Sparkfun's XBee 3 pro radio modules to communicate wirelessly between my laptop and an Arduino Due (over the Due's Serial1 pins).

I purchased this to program an Xbee v3 with XCTU, which I was able to do. There are two problems though. The first is that the fastest baud rate I could get the Xbee to communicate with XCTU was 9,600, which is slower than expected. But my biggest complaint is that I planned to use this device to power my Xbee via usb, again it’s able to do this, but my Xbee has an RP-SMA antenna and the waveshare completely prevents you from being able to mount the antenna through the wall of a box because it’s about 1cm too long. I will have to use jumpers in order to mount this in a box, something that I could have done (and probably will do) with a simple $4 FTDI adapter.

I found a Weather Balloon Payload out in the desert from 2007; and it had an old 2007 XBee Pro MaxStream XBP24-AUI-001 - 802.15.4 in it. In order to communicate with it, I purchased a slightly later version of the same XBee Pro from 2010. With this WaveShare USB board, and Windows 10, I first loaded the drivers from the WaveShare site which is called 'Silicon labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge Universal Windows Driver v10.1.10' and ran it to install the drivers (BEFORE plugging the board into Windows 10). After plugging in the (supplied) cable. After installing, then running, XCTU (Version 6.5.5 - 40003026_AD x86-x64)... I selected 'COM6 Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge' After clicking the XBee symbol in the upper-left with the '+' sign on it (add a radio module) it will start scanning, looking for an XBee. In my case, sometimes it would not find it - then it would ask to press RESET. I'd press RESET and nothing would happen. At other times it would find it. Once it finds it, that session will work just fine. It then the new XBee Pro S1 that I bought says XBEE PRO 802.15.4, COM6 - 38400/8/N/1/N - AT and the MAC address. Don't ask why it says 38400 baud instead of the 9600 baud that it is set at (and the XBee is set at). Maybe it just states the Max Baud rate in the name (although another user said that 9600 was the fastest rate this board allowed). When I double-click on that Name, it reads the XBee's parameters. It used to have a much older firmware; but I updated the firmware to the latest version 10ef for the S1 on both XBee Pros so they match. The LEDs on the WaveShare board... PWR is always red. LED1 is always red and LED3 always blinks at about half-second intervals. Note that a company called DevKits, said thisboard wouldn't work with an XBee Pro S1. They said that, twice and said it was only for their own CORE ZBee CORE2530 CC2530F256 ZigBee (even though it distinctly states that it works with XBee). So, so far, at least - except for it sometimes not responding to a RESET, it at least could be used to update the XBee's firmware and read the parameters. The button named BOOT connects GROUND to the REF pin... so, if you are putting a voltage on that pin in-order to use ADC on the XBee, make sure you either remove that BOOT switch by flowing solder over the switch's connectors or just never push it (as it would short your reference voltage to GROUND if you ever did that. Their ZBee has its own Bootloader built-in... so that button is for their particular board. Possibly some later XBee also has a Bootloader; but my Series 1 doesn't; so I don't know if that is true that any XBee has a Bootloader capability, or not. All-in-all it works well-enough that I purchased a second board and I hope to be communicating between the two very soon. They also supply a 40 pin female and a 40 pin male single-inline connector so you can interface to this board. I would suggest using the female connectors and connect to the board using solid wire instead of trying to put male pins on the bottom to plug into a breadboard socket as the width of the two rows of pins leaves no connecting female socket pins on the breadboard to jumper to as the space between the two is 1.1 inch, exactly the width between the last connectors on a breadboard (thus, all jumper sockets are beneath the board if one plugs it into a breadboard). I also cut a 7-pin female header that I soldered-in to the connector at the end (CTS, RTS, RXD, TXD, GND, 3.3V and 5V) so I can jumper those pins to the breadboard. I cut the headers apart using a thin rotary saw on my Dremel Tool. They don't come in separated sets of 10.

Works add intended