XBee‐PRO®900HP/XBee‐PRO®XSCRFModules
©2014DigiInternationalInc. 91
7E 001C 11 01 0013A200407402AC FFFE E6 E6 0023 C105 00 00 05 00 0000 0000 0000 1F
Assuming all transmissions were successful and that the firmware image previously loaded into the GPM is
valid, the following API packets would be output the source node's serial interface:
7E 0007 8B 01 FFFE 00 00 00 76
7E 001A 91 0013A200407402AC FFFE E6 E6 0023 C105 C1 85 00 0000 0000 0000 5F
Working with Flash Memory
When working with the General Purpose Memory the user should be aware of a number of limitations
associated with working with flash memory:
• Flash memory write operations are only capable of changing binary 1's to binary 0's. Only the
erase operation can change binary 0's to binary 1's. For this reason it is usually necessary to
erase a flash block before performing a write operation.
• A flash memory block must be erased in its entirety when performing an erase operation. A
block cannot be partially erased.
• Flash memory has a limited lifetime. The flash memory on which the GPM is based is rated at
20,000 erase cycles before failure. Care must be taken to ensure that the frequency of erase/
write operations allows for the desired product lifetime. Digi's warranty will not cover products
whose number of erase cycles has been exceeded.
• Over-the-Air firmware upgrades (described in the next section) require the entire GPM be
erased. Any user data stored in the GPM will be lost during an over-the-air upgrade.
Over-the-Air Firmware Upgrades
XBee-PRO 900HP modules provide two methods of updating the firmware on the module. Firmware can be
updated locally via X-CTU (a free testing and configuration utility provided by Digi) using the radio's serial port
interface. Firmware can also be updated using the radios' RF interface (Over-the-Air Updating.)
The over-the-air firmware upgrading method provided is a robust and versatile technique which can be
tailored to many different networks and applications. It has been engineered to be reliable and minimize
disruption of normal network operations.
There are three phases of the over-the-air upgrade process: distributing the new application, verifying the
new application, and installing the new application. In the following section the node which will be upgraded
will be referred to as the target node. The node providing the update information will be referred to as the
source node. In most applications the source node will be locally attached to a PC running update software.
Distributing the New Application
The first phase of performing an over-the-air upgrade on a module is transferring the new firmware file to the
target node. The new firmware image should be loaded in the target node's GPM prior to installation. XBee-
PRO 900HP modules use an encrypted binary (.ebin) file for both serial and over-the-air firmware upgrades.
These firmware files are available on the Digi Support website.
The contents of the .ebin file should be sent to the target radio using general purpose memory WRITE
commands. The entire GPM should be erased prior to beginning an upload of an .ebin file. The contents of the
.ebin file should be stored in order in the appropriate GPM memory blocks. The number of bytes that are sent
in an individual GPM WRITE frame is flexible and can be catered to the user application.
Example:
XBee-PRO 900HP firmware version 8060 has an .ebin file of 55,141 bytes in length. Based on network traffic it
was determined that sending a 128 byte packet every 30 seconds minimized network disruption. For this
reason the .ebin should be divided and addressed as follows:
GPM_BLOCK_NUM
GPM_START_INDEX GPM_NUM_BYTES .ebin bytes
0
0 128 0 to 127
0
128 128 128 to 255
0
256 128 256 to 383
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