Thursday, December 6, 2012

Arduino Fio: Detecting Connectivity

This is a small guide to setting up an Arduino Fio so that you can detect when your communication module (Bluetooth Bee or XBee) is connected through use of the RSSI input.
This involves simply soldering one wire from the RSSI pin to an input of your choice and only takes a few minutes.

The RSSI pin is located here:






















Carefully solder a wire to the pin then to whatever input pin you prefer (I chose pin 7).  Probably best not to follow my example, and give it a bit less solder and a bit more insulation.  Also be sure not to solder it to the through hole below (above CHG).  While the RSSI is "HIGH", the signal strength is good and you are connected, so basically add an "if" statement to your Arduino sketch's loop to set up when its "LOW", and run your program when it is "HIGH".

If you wish to modify it further, go ahead and check out the Fio's EAGLE files here.  Further information can also be found on Arduino's product page and Sparkfun's listing.
More information on XBees and Bluetooth Bees can be found in seeedstudio's wiki.

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