xbee suggestion

XBee & XBee Gateway Other RF Products
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1

hello, i am about to order parts for my first zigbee network. i have over 35 machine which use trio MC206x controller. this controller comes with 2 rs232 port(only 1 for programming purpose) and 1 usb port. we normally use usb port to send command from computer to trio controller.

We are trying to put all the controller to a zigbee network so we don’t have to physically connect each machine that need to connected.

as we only need computer to connect to all the controller to send the command , i believe point to multipoint will suit us the most. we only need to talk to one machine each time. distance is less then 100 ft.

i am wondering
1.what will be the best xbee to get, i presume regular series 2?
2.will xbee usb adpater/explorer directly connected to usb port connected to trio controller will work?
3. if i need to use rs232 port, how do i wire usb explorar to rs232 port? only rx tx and +/- will be ok?

Thanks in advance for reading.

2

No, the XBee product will not work in this situation as you are trying to connect two USB slave devices together. For that you need a device called Wireless USB. Currently Digi does not offer this and what development kits I have see for this are quite expensive. Instead, I would recommend changing the processor to one that has two RS232 ports so 1 can be used for programming and the 2nd for data. Then the XBee ZB modules could be used for this application.