Using a Digi Development board as a USB modem?

Hardware
1

Hi,
I do not have the USB Modem, but I have a Digi Development board that allows me to connect a XBee to my PC, via USB. I was wondering if I could use this setup to configure my nodes with Alpha Station.
When I run Alpha Station, I get an error that it is unable to talk with modem.
Am I doing something wrong? With XCTU, I can easily talk to all nodes, including the NCD ones. But I would need to use Alpha Station to change parameters that are specific to the NCD sensor nodes.

Thanks

2

Can’t say I’ve ever actually tried, but you should be able to provided it acts as a pass through for the data without any additional processing like filtering out the API and just giving you the payload.

One thing that might seem obvious, but is anything else consuming that serial port when you try using it with Node-Red? Things like XCTU and alpha station will consume the port if actively connected to the device.

3

Thank you for the helpful reply.
AFAIK, the USB FTDI on the development board is completely transparent. XCTU has absolutely no problem talking to the XBee on the development board, and from there I can talk to and configure any xbee node on the network, including the NCD nodes.
I then leave XCTU in order to free the com port, and I run alpha station using the same settings as I had used in XCTU (9600/N/1/N).
When I press the first option, to see the sensors, I get a message box saying there’s no modem connected.

4

what baudrate did you use in alpha station.

5

Ah yes, Node-Red will default to 115200, you can change this in the Wireless Gateway node. Is the Configuration for your serial port in Node-Red set to 9600?

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6

I used 9600 baud rate, because that’s what I had configured in xctu.
Should I use 115600?

7

I do not use node red. I only intend to use xctu and alpha station

8

do this

  1. go to xctu
  2. click default
  3. click write and store default values
  4. enable Encryption
  5. set encryption key to 55AA55AA55AA55AA55AA55AA55AA55AA
  6. baud rate to 115200
  7. enable API mode ( option 1 without escape)

write all these settings and try alpha station

9

Would API need to be enabled @Bhaskar ?

1 Like
10

So safest bet is to use XCTU to load this profile into your digi kit’s module: ncd.io-IoT-Wireless-Sensor-Recovery-Files/PC_Xbee_EY_ENABLE.xpro at master · ncdcommunity/ncd.io-IoT-Wireless-Sensor-Recovery-Files · GitHub

Then take a look at the serial port settings. There’s a few things we change in the configurations such as the EE, KY, and AP settings.

11

Thank you everyone. I finally managed to access the nodes with AlphaStation.