Using Xbee radios for telemetry with APM

Hooking up your Xbee wireless modules

Adding wireless telemetry is not difficult and can extend the capabilities of your UAV
immensely. We recommend
900Mhz Xbees

. If you are in Europe, where 900Mhz is not allowed, you can use a 2.4Ghz Xbee kit instead.
Instructions for that are
here

.
_
IMPORTANT
: On APM 2, you
cannot use the Xbee while your APM board is connected to the USB port.
Thats because the Xbee and USB share the same serial port, with some clever multiplexing
to detect if the USB cable is plugged in and switching output to the USB if so. Although that
has the huge win of freeing up a serial port for some other use (want to
connect an Android phone

, anyone?), it does mean that you need to disconnect the board from the USB cable and power
it some other way when testing wireless telemetry on your bench._
Wiring it up
APM 2.0


Connect the XtremeBee adapter (with the Xbee plugged in) to APM 2 as shown above. Your
adapter should be in Master mode. (Master and Slave just reverse the TX and RX
pins).
We recommend the
3DR four-wire Xbee cable

, which comes with the official Wireless Telemetry kit shown above. It is designed to connect
the XtreamBee adapter to APM, as it will provide the neatest and safest connection.
APM 2.5
On APM 2.5, use the dedicated telemetry port and supplied cable, as shown:

On the ground side
If youre using a USB adapter, simply connect it via a USB cable as shown:

If youre using an XtreamBee adapter on the ground side, connect it to a FTDI cable as
shown below and plug that into your USB port. The adapter should also be in Master mode.

Now youre done! Remember to select the right Xbee port (you can see which one has been
assigned to the Xbee in the Windows Control Panel device manager) and a baud rate of 57k
in the Mission Planner or other GCS when youre connecting.


(Optional) Changing your telemetry to use UART2 (aka Serial3)
By default an Xbee connected to the APM2 will use UART0 (aka Serial in Arduino) which
is shared with the USB as mentioned above. If you wish to instead use UART2 (aka
Serial3) for telemetry you can change the AutoMUX UART0 jumper on the bottom of
the APM2.
Although difficult to see, by default there are two small jumpers between the upper pads that
must be cut with an X-Acto blade. Then a new solder bridge must be made to join the bottom
pads.


(Optional) Rolling your own Xbee telemetry setup
You can make your own telemetry kit if youd like. The first thing to keep in mind is that you
should use Xbee modules in a different frequency range than your RC equipment.
In general, we recommend 900Mhz Xbee modules, but in some countries 900Mhz is not
approved. In those cases you can use 2.4Ghz Xbee modules. In that configuration, we use
these
Xbee Pro wireless modules

Setup can be a little tricky, so please see the comments below in this manual to see how other
people have done it. In particular, we do not recommend the DIY Drones XtreamBee adapter
for those modules. Instead, try the
Sparkfun

adapters. Please note that the DIY Drones team will only support the recommended 900Mhz
Xbee modules, so if you use something else please turn the community for help, not the DIY
Drones developers.



(Here!)
is more discussion on how to pick the best frequencies for your setup.

All Xbee modules need adapters to work with APM. You have two choices:
A DIY Drones
XtreamBee adapters
on the aircraft side, and a
USB adapter board

on the ground/laptop side with a USB cable.
If you already have an
FTDI cable

, get two DIY Drones
XtreamBee adapters

.
Setting up the Xbee modules
If you have the DIY Drones Telemetry Kit, your Xbee modules are already set up and ready
to go. But if youre setting up your own, here are some instructions:
The Xbee modules ship with a default of 9600bps, which you must change to match the
APMs serial speed of 57600 bps; set your Xbee modules to match this speed. (If you want to
use a different speed, you can change that by entering the line
#define SERIAL3_BAUD [whatever baud rate you want]
in the APM_Config.h file.)
Connect each one of the them to the USB adapter board, plug the USB cable into your PC,
and use
http://www.digi.com/support/productdetl.j
sp?pid
3352&osvid
57&s
316&tp
5&tp2
0>Digis X-CTU utility

(Mac/Linux users see section below on an alternative utility from motosenso) to select the
right serial port and communicate with them. Remember to initially set the utility to 9600bps
to contact the new Xbee modules, and than after youve changed the speed, change the
utilitys serial speed accordingly. You should also give the modules unique Network IDs
(VIDs) so they will be paired. Just use any 3-digit number, and just make sure you have set it
the same on both modules. (Note: If you will be flying near other UAV planes make sure to
verify the Network IDs are unique and not used by others in your vicinity.)

This is what the setting should look like when you click Read in Modem Configuration tab
of X-CTU (were using 999 as the VID here as an example, and Ive highlighted the correct
baud rate):

Note: If you bought your Xbee modules from Sparkfun, rather than the official DIY Drones
kit, please note that they sometimes ship with the wrong firmware. X-CTU may try to
download new code, which will probably fail (cancel it). If your Xbee module is reporting
that its an XBP09-DM (rather than the correct XBP09-DP), do the following:
1. If you have the XBP09-DP modules, you must download XBP09-DP firmware. If you
have downloaded XBP09-DM firmware, it will kind-of work, but will fail at the PID-
config screen.
2. X-CTU will report the module as XBP09-DM. Ignore that. Go to the Modem
Configuration tab and do the following:
1. Select Modem as XBP09-DP, Function Set XBEE-PRO 900, Version 1002. It
is important that you select 1002. Version 1061 does not work at first.
2. Click the Show Defaults button under the Parameter View.
3. Click the Write button under Modem Parameters and Firmware.
4. Go back to PC Settings, change Baud to 9600. Click Query. It will show
XBP09-DM. Ignore that.
5. Go back to Modem Configuration. Click Read. It should show XBP09-DP as
the modem. Version 1002.
6. Now select Version 1061.
7. Click Show Defaults
8. Click on the DD parameter and set it to 0. This step is important, otherwise the
1161 firmware download will fail.
9. Click Write. Now your firmware is XBP09-DP Version 1161.
3. Now change the baud rate and Modem VID, redownload and you should be good to
go.
It will still show XBP09-DM in the PC Settings Query. Dont worry about that.
For Non-PC users
MacOS, Linux or Windows users there is a free cross-platform alternative to X-CTU, called
moltosenso Network Manager. Download the software
http://www.moltosenso.com/#/pc
=/client/fe/download.php>here

. The moltosenso Team collaborated with us writing a
http://forum.moltosenso.com/viewtopic.ph
p?f
16&t=8>special tutorial
on the setup of Xbee radios for ARDUPILOT and ARDUCOPTER Temetry using their
software. Enjoy!

Testing the connection
If you open up a terminal program on your laptop (you can use the Arduino IDEs serial
monitor for this, too), select the correct serial port, and set the baud rate to whatever you set
the Xbee modules to above (the default is 57600). Once you do this, you should see APM
telemetry coming in. Anytime there is a Serial3.println in the code, that data will be sent
through the Xbees to the ground. You can record any data you want, and even datalog from
the ground! You can also open the Ground Station software, setting the right port and baud
speed) and it should begin to show APM data.
Additionally, if you want to test the range of your Xbee link, connect the plane-side Xbee
modules RX and TX pins together to create a loopback circuit and use the X-CTU utilitys
range test function. For the modules we are using you should get around a mile.
Note
: If youve got an Xbee attached to your APM, the USB cable will probably not provide
enough power by itself to drive them both. Please also have an ESC and LiPo connected to
the RC pins to provide additional power. (You can tell that youve got a low power
(brownout) condition if you just have the red C LED blinking dimly, or the APM board is
otherwise intermittent.)
Test code
ArduPilot Mega has four serial ports so all the usual Arduino serial commands now take a
specifier to say which port you want to read from or write to. For example: Serial1.print(),
Serial2.print(). The port connected to the USB/FDTI connector is Serial0. The port connected
to the Telecom pins is Serial3.

http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-
mega/downloads/detail?name
MultiSerialMega.zip&can
2&q
>Heres

a quick demo that will print to all four ports so you can check to see that your Xbee
connection is working. Here are the instructions on how to use it:

1)
Plug your Xbee into one USB port and your APM into another. Use Arduino to load the
demo code, and then in the Arduino IDE set the serial port to the one assigned to your APM
board. Then open the serial monitor, setting the baud rate to 115200. You should see Port 0
repeated as follows, showing the output from the APMs USB port:

2)
Now switch the serial port to the one your Xbee is assigned to and reopen the serial monitor,
setting the baud rate to 57600 (which is the speed your Xbees should already be programmed
for). You should now see Port 3 repeated, showing the output from APMs Xbee port:

Unbricking an Xbee
IMPORTANT NOTE: Sometimes Xbee modules get corrupted due to spurious signals. If
youre finding that yours stops working (green LED on Adafruit adapter doesnt come on),
instructions to reload the firmware follow:
Using the USB adapter board:
1. Take the module out of the interface board.
2. Connect the interface board to the computer.
3. Open X-CTU make sure Baud Rate is set to 9600
4. Go to Modem Configuration
5. Put a check in the Always update firmware box
6. Select proper modem from drop down menu (for the 900Mhz ones recommended
above select XBP09-DP; for 2.4GHZ Xeebee Pro 2 select XBP24-B)
7. Click on the Write button. After a few seconds of trying to read the modem, you
will get an Info box that says Action Needed. At this point, CAREFULLY insert the
module into the interface board. After a few seconds, this should trigger a reloading of
the firmware.
8. You may get the info box again a short while after; if so just repeat the previous step a
few times and it should work.
9. This will put the module back to 9600 baud. Set your X-CTU PC settings to that and
test it. It should report back that its recognized.
10. Once youve confirmed that its working again, make you sure you reset its baud rate
(typically 57k for APM) and VID number to match your other module.
_(Thanks to Doug Barnett for these tips)_

http://www.scribd.com/doc/226022024/Perancangan-Sistem-Telemetri-Wireless-Untuk-
Mengukur-Suhu-Dan#download