XBBO - break out board for XBee shaped modules

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XBBO - break out board for XBee shaped modules

When built in "active" configuration, see other products

XBBO - break out board for XBee shaped modules

£2.00 (inc VAT) £1.67 (exc VAT)

( 6 product reviews )

SKU

K012

Brand:

Ciseco

Delivery

Calculated at checkout

Product description

We believe that our XBBO is the best XBee Break Out board ever. This board supports and has been tested with many different modules that are XBee shaped. Is the perfect partner for our XRF.

The XBBO ships in two forms: passive and active. Passive kits are lower in cost and require the data and supply to be at a nominal 3.3v. The active kit has 5V logic conversion and voltage regulator parts, as well as LEDs to allow you to monitor activity.

The main features are:

Supports many different XBee shaped modules
Unique support for over the air micro programming (OTAMP) straight from the Arduino IDE (requires XRFs)
0.1" header rows moved to the outside, fits on your breadboard
5 pin right angled header so you can plug straight into our Xino ultra low cost Arduino shaped boards or stand upright on a bread board, saving space vs. using them lying down.
3 extra pads along the right angled connector that can be jumpered to any pin on your XBee shaped device
battery / external power wire strain relief
made in the UK

For the active XBBO there is even more:

LEDs to help you monitor activity
6V maximum (5V nominal) power supply
5V logic conversion (RX/TX)
MCP1700 voltage regulator with just 0.05v dropout at 60ma (22 times better at least than the 1117 regulator that drops 1.1V!) allowing you to use LiPo, LiMH etc.
Regulator can supply up to 200mA to power a micro controller

The XBBOs are shipped as a kit of parts for you to solder.

Technical data

Dimensions:

PCB: 46 mm x 32 mm

Built kit, including angled headers: 48 mm x 32 mm x 15 mm

Downloads

There are no driver downloads

Documentation

Build guide

Projects

Live temperature logging.

Related or associated products

This product maybe interesting

XRF, RFu-328, Slice of PI add-on to Raspberry Pi,

Also available from

UK

Really important note from us

Make an informed purchase

We strongly recommend you read all about this item before purchase. Our products are intended for people who love the challenge of being part of making things. Some items are easy to use and some are not, please make your decision to buy based on what you see combined with your own experience levels. Please don't rush in, if you need to ask questions, please do on our forum at Openmicros.org

Postage

We offer various choices of postage, please be aware the lowest cost options are usually not tracked. If your order has not been received within a reasonable time please follow this link

Useful thing

Posted by Unknown on 16th Aug 2012

I've bought an active version. It was very easy to assmble it becuse of very clear instruction on the support page. Just after assembly plugged my XRF and got waht expected. Very good adapter for XRF module, with own power regulator and two indicator leds, wich converts XRF pins into one easy to use header with the all important signal lines.
Active vs Passive

Posted by Roger Philp on 31st Jul 2012

I bought the passive boards initially and simply could not get them working. I then bought the active boards which also wouldn't work until I
realized that the cts and gnd had to be shorted
- perhaps this would fix the passives.
Although they now work, I was a little unhappy about the lack of documentation: I have a busy schedule and if things don't work straight away, then they get put aside for ages before I can get back to them. They are also a team with the XRFs and so there should be two pitch settings for boards XBEE and standard bread board. Otherwise I do like the product.

Update - What modules required this? Our XRF's and the Xbee's I've tried don't need this to happen, I can only think it's specific to the module you are using or how it was setup for use.
A very useful addition to the XRFs

Posted by Paul on 16th Jun 2012

I bought a couple of these (active) to go with my XRFs and they perform wonderfully.

It's fun to build and very useful once finished!
Good Piece of Kit

Posted by Richard on 21st May 2012

Kit was easy to assemble and I was up and running with a pair of Xbees within an hour.
Nifty

Posted by Charli on 8th Feb 2012

Took me ages to solder these as the parts are teeny (I'm terrible at soldering), the fact that it works ocne assembled is testament to the build quality!

The active one has flashy LEDs! Though I haven't worked out what LED1 does yet. The voltage regulation built in is also really handy.

I use the non-right angled breadboard pins (the 10 pins, not the vertical-mounting ones) which are annoyingly the width of all my breadboards so you have to struggle to position flat wires underneath them. Though most people seem to prefer this.. maybe I'm just odd.
XBBO Active Breakout board for XRF

Posted by Geoff Baldwin on 18th Dec 2011

I bought a pair of active XBBO kits as I wanted to experiment with the XRF tranceivers using picaxe 28X2 MCU's running at 5v it took less than 15 min to assemble the pair. They worked brilliantly as soon as I realised the the TX pins on the XBBO meant 'out to the MCU' and not and not TX (transmit)through the XRF module. my only complaint is that the documentation is a little vague and you need to hunt online for it and even what you can find has no schematic diagram. LED2 on the board displays the 'heartbeat' of the XRF but I still have no idea what LED1 is used for. Nevertheless the board represents excellent value and it does the job admirably when working with breadboards.

NOTE FROM CISECO: We are trying to improve the documentation of products, agreed it is our weakest point at present 01/2012