XBee shield with the new level shifter

[pstemari]

The new 8-channel level shifter board got me to thinking that incorporating a pair of these chips into an XBee shield would be a great idea. I laid one out, using a few ideas from the Sparkfun shield:

XBeeShield.png (42.68 KiB) Viewed 859 times

This has the switch and jumpers to let you select the TX/RX source, all the pins brought out to the breadboarding area, and the usual LEDs and pushbuttons. The main thing lacking is a Vref input, but since that's on series one only, and the level shifters defeat using the ADCs on the XBee, it doesn't seem like a loss.

Thoughts?

[adafruit]

nice!

[pstemari]

Thanks. I'm not fond of all the vias around the drivers, but I guess that's inevitable with SMD stuff.

[kscharf]

Have you had boards made for this yet? The Sparkfun board is actually broken as the diode they used in the Xbee transmit line (IE: uart IN to the xbee) won't let the Arduino pull the line low enough for the Xbee to see a logic zero. By driving it with a level shifter your board would actually work!
People have replaced the diode with a resistor on the Sparkfun board to make it work (the Xbee can tolerate 5 volt high logic it seems).

[adafruit]

Have you had boards made for this yet? The Sparkfun board is actually broken as the diode they used in the Xbee transmit line (IE: uart IN to the xbee) won't let the Arduino pull the line low enough for the Xbee to see a logic zero. By driving it with a level shifter your board would actually work!
People have replaced the diode with a resistor on the Sparkfun board to make it work (the Xbee can tolerate 5 volt high logic it seems).

that is not true. the Xbee is in no way 5 volt compliant.