Using a Bee Device with a Sodaq Board

This page describes how to use a bee device (e.g. BLE Bee or WiFi Bee) with a Sodaq board.

The Sodaq board connects the Bee RX/TX lines directly to the RX/TX lines used for USB communication, which can make development and debugging challenging. Our approach is to use another Sodaq board as a software bridge for talking to the Sodaq with the bee device. This bridge board could alternatively be a USB-to-TTL serial adapter.

Note: If you use an Arduino Uno or other 5V Arduino board, you must also use a level shifter board. The Sodaq must not receive more than 3.3V on any of its input pins. It also must not receive more than 3.3V on the 3.3V pin. The simplest solution is to use a 3.3V microcontroller (such as a Sodaq) as the bridge.

You may also find it useful to use the DisplayStream class in the WireGarden library to feed diagnostic messages to an OLED display.

WiFi Bee

To communicate with the WiFi Bee, set the baud rate to 9600 and set the end-of-line mode to none (no carriage return, no line feed), then send $$$. Next set the end-of-line mode to carriage return (CR). Now you can send commands as described in the product's Wiki page

BLE Bee (HM-11-Based)

To communicate with the HM-11-based BLE Bee, set the baud rate to 9600 and set the end-of-line mode to none (no carriage return, no line feed). You can then send commands as described in the product's Wiki page.