Important: Libelium has launched a new sensor device: Waspmote. It is ready for research and market applications. You can discover the differences between both platforms in the document: Waspmote vs SquidBee.
The modules we are going to join for this mote are:
- XBee shield (included in SquidBee)
GPRS module is connected directly on the top of the Arduino board, and XBee shield only needs four small cables for making the connection with Arduino. Two of the cables are for power (5v - GND) and two for the serial communication (Rx - Tx) (see schema below).
Rx and Tx go to pin 8 and 9 in Arduino
5V and GND on the XBee shield go to 5V - GND pin on the GPRS shield.
(for the cables we can use pin headers and heat-shrinkable sleeve if we want a professional touch)
Once we have connected the cables we can put all the system into the SquidBee box and we get a mote like in the picture.
Once we have the hardware ready, we have to develop the software for the mote. In this case we are going to use the "normal" serial port for the communication with GPRS module, so we have to communicate with XBee via softwareSerial library on 8 and 9 pins.
Of course the pins we don't use for the modules are available for connecting sensors...
In this other article we develop an example of application "Sending alarm SMS with our motes"
