There are essentially two ways to review this book. Since it is a lab manual, with detailed instructions on how to construct the respective experiments, one can review it while experimenting with the actual equipment. Or one could read it before experimenting, to see whether it meets his or her criteria for having fun. I took the latter approach. My purpose was to find out if it matched my needs for learning and teaching how to do projects with XBee and Arduino in a classroom environment, whether in college, high school, or privately run courses.

I was also excited to read it because it comes from someone credited with designing and building the first build-it-yourself personal computer (now in the collection at the Smithsonian) [1]. This came out a few months before the Altair 8080 and a couple of years before Apple’s first computer.

The motivation to write and publish this book was, in the author’s own words, to “appeal to engineers, product designers, entrepreneurs, teachers, experimenters, and students who want to learn how to use the popular XBee wireless communication modules [...] without having to master radio engineering or complicated communication protocols.” The book meets this goal.

It is composed of 22 chapters, called experiments, appropriate for a lab manual. Strict XBee experiments are covered in chapters 1 to 15, about half of the book. From a very elementary introduction to XBee software, to an experiment on “How to Control Several XBee Modules with Broadcast Commands,” the book offers the reader detailed knowledge, backed by practical exercises, on how to construct and run XBee hardware to perform all sorts of functions, including wireless communication between XBee modules, the remote control of analog and digital devices, pulse-width modulation, and more.

This is enhanced in the next six chapters, 16 through 21, which discuss using Arduino- and ARM-based boards with XBee. These chapters are a bit more advanced and involve programming experiments for two-way communication with XBee modules, discovering nearby modules, and handling an unknown number of them. The last experiment (chapter 22) ventures into the sleep cycles of XBee modules, used to save power. The book ends with a number of appendices that include more technical information and a glossary of terms.

The value of this book lies in the way it guides the reader through assembling the hardware pieces and setting up the experiments, and provides information not easily found in product specifications, user manuals, or application notes. Overall, I am glad that I took a doing-after-reading approach, since even though the XBee/Arduino/ARM technology is relatively stable, vendors tend to announce newer products, chips, and boards that expand the functionality, adding more features and capabilities, and fixing some minor bugs. Thus, I could stay a little bit ahead of the text.

I have read publications by Jon Titus since the late ’70s, when he published, with a number of co-authors, an array of educational, entertaining, and professionally valued books on microprocessors and microcomputers (for example, [2]). His writing has not changed since then; it remains as informative and instructive as ever. Explaining major concepts, leading the reader through the subject, focusing on practical issues, and attending to details--these are the author’s strong points, which make this book a good and valuable read. There are not as many good writers among engineers as one might think, but Jon Titus is one of the best.

Regarding the audience of this book, in addition to people with technical skills, educators, and students, hobbyists are likely to find it of interest. It may even be useful to amateurs with no prior knowledge of hardware or programming, although such knowledge definitely helps in digesting the text and putting the experiments together.