NOTE!

Check out xbee-api. It separates out the API component and is aimed at being a more solid and tested module for working with XBees. New higher level modules based on xbee-api are in development here: xbee-stream and here xbee-nodes.

SVD-XBEE

Digi's xbee modules are good for quickly building low power wireless networks. They can be used to send/receive text data from serial ports of different devices. XBees can also be used alone for their on board digital and analog I/O capabilities.

svd-xbee is a high level, actively maintained fork of Richard Morrison's node-xbee. It talks the ZigBee API with XBee radio modules over serial connections and provides high level abstractions of the XBee's functionality.

Nutshell

var XBee = require('svd-xbee');
 
var xbee = new XBee({
  port: 'COM3',   // replace with yours
  baudrate: 9600 // 9600 is default
}).init();
 
var robot = xbee.addNode([0x00,0x13,0xa2,0x00,0x40,0x61,0xaa,0xe2]);
 
var robot.on("data", function(data) {
    console.log("robot>", data);
    if (data == "ping") robot.send("pong");
});

Features

• Asynchronous architecture
• Event-based Node Discovery
• Local and remote AT commands
• High-level abstraction of common tasks
• Parse API frames into meaningful objects
  • Regular text data
  • Analog & Digital I/O Samples
  • Modem Status
  • Transmission Reports

Installation

npm install svd-xbee

Documentation

For documentation, see the Documentation.

EXAMPLES

See the examples folder in the repository for more examples.

SUPPORTED XBEE MODELS

Both ZNet 2.5 and ZIGBEE modules should be supported. Since ZIGBEE offers more features and is more robust, you might be interested in upgrading your modules from ZNet 2.5 to ZIGBEE: upgradingfromznettozb.pdf.
Development is done using Series 2 XBee modules with XB24-ZB (ZIGBEE) firmware. In specific, this document is used as reference: 90000976_M.pdf.

MODULE CONFIGURATION

The module communicating with svd-xbee must be set to use an API function set with escape characters enabled (ATAP = 2). Other nodes in the network can be configured however you find it convenient. See Module Configuration for more details.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

• voodootikigod's serialport module (in fact you're going to need this to use this package)
• "Building Wireless Sensor Networks" by Rob Faludi

LICENSE

This work by Jan Kolkmeier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Based on a work at github.com.