XBee two-way communication (sender and receiver) at the same time

Question

Let's say I am trying to make a chat program like in the YouTube video XBee Basics - Lesson 2 - Simple Chat Program Between Two XBees in AT Mode.

In this video, he explained that one XBee is a sender which sends "Hello world" to the another XBee using Arduino.

However, is the XBee able to send and receive data at the same time? Are the routers able to communicate to the coordinator and the other way around?

Additionally, I want to write my own software to receive and send data and not using Arduino software. Are there any libraries and APIs?

Articles or videos would be nice.

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible to send and receive data at the same time. When XBee modules are configured in "AT mode" (also referred to as "Transparent Serial"), you configure the DH and DL parameters to identify the destination node that will receive the serial data.

You should definitely spend some time at examples.digi.com for step-by-step tutorials on setting up various examples like a two way chat. The Quick Reference page includes a long list of libraries in various languages, including the Digi XBee ANSI C Library for C and xbee-api for Java.