I am having some trouble getting started with XBee ZB products. I would sincerely appreciate any help and guidance.
I have an XStick ZB, an XBee Smart Plug, and an XBee Sensor.
To start out, I simply want to make sure that I can use the XStick as a Coordinator and discovery the Smart Plug and Sensor. To do so, I installed the XStick driver and installed X-CTU. I select “USB Serial Port (COM4)” and under host setup I select “Host API.” After that, I go to “Modem Configuration” and click the Read button. By reading the device, I see:
That looks OK to me. I have the Smart Plug and Sensor powered on, both have their “ASSC” light flashing.
After that, in X-CTU I click on “Remote Configuration” and “Open COM Port” … then I click “Discover” and all I see is my Coordinator in the list, nothing else:
Does anyone have any insight here? I would greatly appreciate any help.
So, using a ZigBee device in monitoring mode (Redwire EconoTAG), I was able to determine that the Sensor was on 2.410GHz (channel 1 or C).
So, I reconfigured the XStick’s ‘SC’ parameter to be 0x0002. This would force it on to the same channel as the sensor.
Here, I have a pcap capture of what happened: Pcap trace
The first 4 packets are the XStick on the channel, broadcasting the link status. Then I powered on the Sensor, and you can see it periodically broadcasting packets 5-9. Then they begin to sit on the same channel together.
Now, in X-CTU I go back to “Remote Management” and click on “Discover” and get an empty list again. However, packets 41, 43, and 44 were the packets that the XStick transmitted once I hit “Discover.” So it is attempting to do something on the channel.
Regardless, my Remote Management list still only shows the Coordinator :\
I can also put the XStick on the same channel as the Smart Plug, see them both in the channel, and “Discover” still turns up only the Coordinator (XStick)
BTW - when ‘SC’ is set to 0x1FFE and I hit discover, I do not see the XStick actively scan other channels other than the one it is operating on (monitoring using my EconoTAG)
I filed a support request, and got back the answer of pressing the reset button on the sensor 4 times, which will cause them to leave their current network and re-find the coordinator. After doing so, I am able to find the Smart Plug. So, I thought I’d update this with a little bit of success for people with this problem in the future.
However, I have pressed the sensor 4 times on the XBee Sensor and I still cannot discover that device…
Sorry I didn’t answer anythign for you - I was out of the office the week of the 3rd.
Make sure you place fixed PAN ID into everythign once discovered - otherwise turning off your gateway for a few days could cause all your devices to vanish again!
The SC setting in a coordinator doesn’t cause it to ‘scan’ looking for nodes. Zigbee works in reverse. SC in the coordinator defines which channels the coordinator will consider ‘setting up the mesh in’. Once it has found what it considers a good enough channel (not too noisy or crowded), it just stays there waits for nodes to join it.
The 4-button press can be fussy in timing - not too fast or slow is required. I tend to talk to my self when I do - say ‘dot-dot-dot-dot’. So far no one has reported me as crazy to the police.
The main thing I could see causing the XBee Sensor NOT to connect would be:
the 4-button press is not right speed
a fixed PAN ID is installed which doesn’t match the coordinator. In theory, the 4-button press clears the PAn ID, but not if it’s been installed as factory default. I doubt you have done that - it can’t be done by accident, but if someone else used the devcie before you, they may have done that.
I have used the XBee Sensor and not had much trouble with it - however since we have up to 8 coordinators per channel here, I often just open the sensor, move the XBee to an XBIB board and manually force the joining with a fixed PAN ID.
