I bought my XBees from Sparkfun. Check this link for the product.
I am planning to connect the XBee shield to a flight controller (pixhawk) that runs on a 57600 baud rate. The other XBee will be connected to my PC (XBee Explorer USB).
My question is: should I configure only the XBee connected to my PC to run at 57600 baud rate? By default the baud rate of XBees is 9600. Now, if I should configure both XBees can I just use the XBEE Explorer USB and exchange the XBees? In other words, is the configuration saved in the XBee module itself or the board holding it? (Explorer USB or Shield)
Thank you!
Nicolas
It's entirely up to you. They don't need to be the same baud rate -- that's just the speed used on the wired connection to the host. The XBee radios send to each other at 250kbps.
And yes, the speed is stored in the XBee module itself. The Explorer USB and Shield are just physical interfaces between the module and your host processor.
My personal preference is to use 115,200bps so you don't waste time sending and receiving data over the serial port. The default is low because a faster host can always drop to a lower baud rate and send a configuration command to switch to a higher rate, but not vice versa.