Hi Eric, disconnect the Tx, Rx leads from the EZ-B and connect them together. Then using a terminal program establish a connection from your Win 8 computer Xbee to the EZ-B Xbee. Once the connection is established you should be able to type characters and they should display on the computer screen.

Also did you use the bluetooth to establish the initial connection and download version 16 into your EZ-B ?

Thanks for replying Robot-Doc, I have looped the Tx and Rx and used X-CUT program and tested the connection on the xbee and that was good. I have not established an initial connection with Bluetooth or downloaded version 16. Please go though that procedure for me.
Eric

Go to the top of this page and click on the "Learn" selection, then follow the video tutorials that will take you through the setup procedure: "Getting Started with EZ-Robot"

Thanks again for you help, I have watched that a few time but never try actually connecting to Bluetooth. I will follow your advice. My robot is a large tracked unit with one operating system which is up and going but I would like to add ez-b because of all the cool things it can do.
Eric

I wrote a document sometime ago that may help a bit, its good to have some level shifting circuitry from the EZ-B to the Xbee Rx line as the EZ-Bv3 operates at 5V and the xbee at 3.3V, the document describes using a resistor voltage divider and can be found here.

Another thing that's confusing is that the Labels on the EZ-B are not that of the Actually PIC chip connections but rather the Xbee/Bluetooth connections, so you'll need to have Xbee Tx connected to the port labeled Tx on the board and same for the Rx (Rx -> Rx ideally with a voltage divider in between).

As part of a thread where I was trying to hook up an EZ-B v3 via Wifi.

http://www.ez-robot.com/Community/Forum/posts.aspx?threadId=4131&page=1

"I figured Out that ARC sends a couple for Hex 55 ASCII Letter "U" to the EZ-B board as part of its initial communications test. The EZ-B board seems to respond with a Hex A0. This is most likely part of the baud rate detection sequence. This was one of the things I was hoping to find out. I have tried manually sending a couple of Hex 55 ASCII Letter "U"s to the EZ-B board using realterm terminal software through the Bluetooth COM port and received the EZ-B boards A0 response back so now I have a simple way of checking out the wifi uart board for basic connectivity with the EZ-B board."

This should work for you with the Xbee interface as a way to test initial connectivity to the EZ-B and make sure you have the Transmit and Recieve lines are proper.

There may be an issue with connection via anything until the EZ-B is flashed with version 16.

Robot-Doc is correct. Until you update the firmware the board probably won't function properly with ARC. A lot of what is in ARC now isn't supported by the original on-board firmware. I may be wrong but, xbee support might be one of those things. You should connect via Blu-Tooth and update the firmware then go ahead and try your xbee set-up.

Thanks for all the good advice I was able to get things working.
Eric

Great to hear Eric! Have any pics of the project?