Light is on, no one's home

[XBolt]

Setup: Xbee series 1, ftdi cable, adafruit adapter kit, windows 8.1

When plugging in the FTDI cable both red and green led's flash brightly and stop. Windows 8.1 recognizes the ftdi cable (com8 in my case). Adapter kit shows steady flashing green led indicating power. Terminal program nor XTCU (old or next generation) will recognize xbee. XCTU gives me a no active bootloader error.

Given that the adapter is reading power, do you think soldering job is the likely culrpit and I don't have a good connection there? Is there one area of the soldering job that is more important and should be scrutinized more closely? I just have read a lot about bricked xbees and other issues and wanted to just check in before revisiting the soldering. (Not looking for you to analyze the soldering at this point, just asking if it's the most likely place) Thanks.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Terminal program nor XTCU (old or next generation) will recognize xbee.

Sounds like everything is fine up through the adapter if you are getting that far. But if you post a photo of your soldering we can double-check.

You might ask over at the Digi forums if anyone has seen the "no active bootloader" error.
http://www.digi.com/support/forum/

[XBolt]

i'll give that a go. Thanks Bill. Maybe I'll have my son redo the soldering - my old eyes take a beating with the small joints. Will post when redone if the digi forums don't suggest anything else.

[XBolt]

okay, was indeed a cruddy soldering job. cleaned up the joints and one was recognized right away by xctu.

the second xbee can update the firmware, but won't be recognized. the green led blinks much faster, almost to the point of a constant on. This is likely to indicate a short somewhere, yes?

[adafruit_support_bill]

Typically, if it was a short, it would affect both modules. It sounds more like the module is indicating some state or error condition. The documentation mentions some led blinking patterns. see if any of them sound applicable.
http://ftp1.digi.com/support/documentat ... 0982_S.pdf

[XBolt]

Thank you. I think xbee #2 was another soldering problem (sorry, I forgot to mention each xbee had its own adapter). I got it connected late last night. I now appreciate how sensitive some of the sodlering contacts are to being slightly off. The pdf you sent is extremely helpful though so I very much appreciate you pointing it out.

[adafruit_support_bill]

You might want to check out this guide for tips on soldering and troubleshooting soldering problems:
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-gui ... -soldering