NYU Professor Robert Faludi, has supplied a very easy to follow book tackling the construction of a XBee wireless network, which is not as simple as it may appear. He provides both a step by step guide and a basic understanding/education of the technology involved.
This book starts with describing initial choices around hardware and software to construct a XBee wireless network, Professor Faludi also does a quick tutorial on radio transmissions theory and wireless networking. Once you have the bits and pieces set out, Professor Faludi walks through a number of projects helping to build up the readers overall knowledge:
1. A Wireless doorbell
2. Romantic Lighting Sensor
3. Simple Sensor Network
4. Simple Sensor with Sleep Project
He then discusses a XBee Internet Gateway (XIG) project ( see his blog), this opens up the borders by allowing the XBee radios to proxy through the ConnectPort X2 and hence be accessable via the Web.
Next project, a project to Tweat to a XBee. Professor Faludi concludes the book with a review of the ZigBee stack, a list of plans for the ZigBee platform. Finally there is a resource guide for Arduino, Python, ZigBee, Digi, etc.
This book really offers a end to end introduction to XBee radio networks and is well worth the time for anyone who is hacking or looking at industrial applications in sensor networks.