Arduino XBee breakout board holder

thingiverse

A holder to allow an XBee on a Ciseco XBBO breakout board to be mounted on a standard Arduino prototyping shield. I needed a convenient way to mount an XBee on a shield in a current project, using the SoftwareSerial library with pins D6 and D7 in order to keep Tx and Rx free. Although some of the commercial XBee shields can be configured this way they almost all use the ISP header, which wasn't possible with my current project. Hence this holder to allow the breakout to be fitted to a plain prototyping shield. Instructions The holder was printed raftless with layers=3 and infill=0.2 (though there's very little solid volume). The clips may be quite fragile - brushing them with acetone makes them considerably stronger. The STL file contains a 'blob' which I find helpful to get the extruder primed before starting the main print. Cut a spare long-legged header down to 5 pins and bend the legs at 90 degrees - this will be the connection to the XBee breakout board. Solder the link wires to the connecting holes on the prototyping shield near the main Arduino headers and route them carefully to the holes where the XBee header will fit. Be sure the connections are correct! Thread the stripped ends through the holes but don't solder them yet. Pop the legs of the 5-pin header though the slot in the holder and check that you can fit it flush against the shield and that the legs of the header will fit though the holes with the link wires. Once it fits OK, apply some adhesive (clear general purpose glue should be fine) and hold it firmly in place until the glue dries. Then slip the connector on the XBee breakout board into the header and clip the board into the holder. With everything held firmly in place, solder the header and link wires to the prototyping board. Finally, recheck your wiring, then fit the XBee and away you go!