My awesome brother and I have been playing with
XBee radios for the past few days. Darned near all of the programming interfaces -- and fancier breakout boards -- use a USB-to-FTDI serial translator. I've got a new Air here that doesn't have the drivers installed yet. So, since it took a minute or two to determine what I needed, here's my quick outline for the next time:
- You want the Virtual Comm Port (VCP) version of the driver.
- Plug in. See if Terminal.app shows the new cu and tty devices, with `ls -l /dev/*usbserial*`
- CoolTerm seems to be a nice terminal emulator. (ZTerm still works, for the old-skoolers!)
- Plug in USB .. to FTDI translator .. to breakout board .. to XBee radio.
- XBees ship with 8N1 serial at 9600 baud. Set your terminal emulator accordingly.
- XBees don't echo your input, so turn on Local Echo in your terminal emulator.
- In the terminal emulator, type "+++" to get into command mode. XBee will reply "OK."
- Continue building your robot army.
You don't actually need CoolTerm or ZTerm, if you don't mind that
`screen` won't do a local echo. If you're okay with typing blind, a
`screen /dev/cu.usbserial*` command should work just fine (as long there's only one usbserial device connected at a time). Crafting a one-liner that fakes local echo is left as an exercise for our new robotic overlords.
