What is it?

Full-featured cape for BeagleBone and BeagleBone Black to connect XBee (IEEE 802.15.4 or ZigBee) radios to a beagle. The XBee radios provide reliable communication for distances as great as a mile (1.6km). The cape has a socket for an identification EEPROM as well as jumpers to select among the four available cape addresses. There is also a connection for a 3.3V FTDI cable that allows the XBee radios to be programmed and configured without removing them from the cape and installing them into a USB XBee adapter. The board supports transmit/receive and association LEDs. There are also jumpers on the board for users that wish to use the hardware reset and sleep pins on the XBee module. This is for the PCB only, no components or XBee modules are included

Why did you make it?

This board was developed in order to allow hacking from a distance with multiple BeagleBone-based devices. This board is full described in the book Hacking and Penetration Testing with Low Power Devices by Philip Polstra.

What makes it special?

When the board was first designed there were no commercially available XBee capes. Of the options that have come out since then (including suspiciously similar designs) this is the only version to support an identification EEPROM and on-board programming of the XBee via an FTDI cable.