Realport to XBee devices??

XBee & XBee Gateway XBee - Zigbee
1

Ok, so a few days ago my very first XK-B11-SK (Drop-in Networking Starter Kit - ZNet 2.5) arrived and I’ve been playing with it for a little while now and I’m starting to get a little frustrated.

My first goal was to get a simple serial device to connect via the adapter throught he connectport x8 using HyperTerminal. I’ve installed RealPort (twice), followed the instructions in the many PDFs from digi.com and cant seem to get things to connect. Ive tested the connections with “telnet 192.168.1.1” and “telnet 192.168.1.1 771” and both connect (when calling 771 I get the blank window w/ flashing curser like it says i should) but when I try to open the port with HyperTerminal i (99 times of 100) get a port error (like port wont open, or something similar). One time I did get Hypertermial to connect w/o complaining but it wouldnt accept any keystroke inputs (just a flashing curser in the Hyperterminal window … wouldnt let me type anything).

I’m completely new with this whole ZigBee, XBee, ZNet thing so I need a little coaching. Is there a good PDF or site that can get me started? Seems like there should be a college course on this stuff. Seems like it can do SOOOOOOO much, but its making me feel stupid and its winning. arg

Thanks for any help. I appreciate it greatly!
-Ian

2

It sounds like what you’d like to do is create Realport devices to XBee modules on your PAN, which is currently not possible. Realport can be used to create a Windows comm port for the DB9 on the CP-X8, as long as the CP-X8’s serial port is configured for profile “Realport”.

One option which would allow you to talk to the serial devices in your PAN would be to obtain (from Digi support), or create a python script which would create TCP sockets for each of the serial devices in the PAN. You could then telnet directly in to one of these created TCP ports, and you’d be talking directly to your serial device.

Questions regarding python and scripting can be posted over on the python forum, but I’d recommend checking out the Digi Python wiki site first: http://www.digi.com/wiki/python/

3

The admin in this post indicated that mapping a realport com port to an Xbee module is not possible. Is there a chance that this will be a future capability?

Thanks!

Message was edited by: natn

4

admin,

So, what your saying is only the serial port on the physical CP-X8 box can be used with realport? What would I used the “XBee 232 Adapter” for then?

I was under the impression I could use the 232 adapters with realport and create a virtual com port on windows for each 232 adapter… ?

5

Ok, so I’ve spoken with some of the people in our Engineering staff, and found out this MAY be doable by using Realport in UDP mode, along with running a UDP-Sockets script (or the IA engine of X4/X8) on the CP-X.

This page explains how to set up the WINDOWS version of Realport to use UDP:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/python/index.php/Using_Digi_Realport_with_Python

Here’s a UDP to XBee example:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/python/index.php/UDP_to_XBee_Network

Using UDP Realport will get the data to your CP-X8, at which point a UDP-Sockets python script (or the IA engine in CP-X4/X8 models with current EOS firmware) could be used to marry the Realport driver operating in UDP mode with the UDP sockets (of the XBee adapters on your PAN) which are created by your python app.

Since UDP is broadcast data, you’ll need to configure the baud rate and flow control of your XBee adapters to match whatever serial device is physically connected to them.

Several customers have used the solution detailed above and reported it works well, as long as you don’t overdrive your PAN.

6

i believe this is one of the instruction sets I’ve followed and didnt have any luck. Let me give it another try though.

Thanks
I’ll report back (hopefully w/in a few days)