How to Connect an Arduino to an XBee Radio

Solderless breadboards and XBee breakout boards provide an easy way to link your Arduino board to an XBee. While the XBee has many pins, it takes only four of them to create a working connection so that your Arduino can communicate wirelessly, using its built-in serial communications protocol.

Remember that the XBee pins are spaced 2 mm apart, so the XBee can’t be placed directly into a breadboard. A basic breakout board is the least expensive adapter for connecting to an Arduino (for example Sparkfun parts BOB-08669 with PRT-08272 & PRT-00116). You can also use an XBee Explorer as a breakout board (Sparkfun WRL-08687), but keep in mind that the pins are arranged differently. The four connecting wires will provide power, electrical ground, transmit, and receive. The table below shows the pin connections between Arduino and XBee, and the image below shows them on an XBee breakout board.

XBee	Arduino
VCC or 3.3 V	3V3
TX or DOUT	RX or 0
RX or DIN	TX or 1
GND	GND

Remember, if you are using the XBee Explorer you’ll connect the same pins but their physical layout will be different, as shown below.




After plugging your XBee into a small breadboard, you can use different colors of hookup wire to make the connections between your Arduino and XBee. Once connected, the Arduino uses serial commands to send information out via the XBee, and to read in any information that’s received. This is how our doorbells will operate.