XCTU preferences

To configure XCTU settings, click the Preferences button on the XCTU toolbar.

Configuration preferences are grouped into categories listed on the left-hand side of the preferences dialog box. You can configure settings in the following XCTU categories:

Appearance

You can configure some graphic aspects of the tool and how some elements are displayed.

Field	Description
Font size	Change all the XCTU texts size in percentage, from 50 to 120%.
Show top bar menu	Displays an application top bar menu with texts.
Show text on toolbar actions	Displays the name of the action below each toolbar element for a better understanding of the meaning of each action.
Use reduced toolbars size	Changes the size of the application toolbars reducing them.

Automatic updates

Field	Description
Automatically find new updates and notify me	Enables or disables automatic XCTU updates. Uncheck if you do not want XCTU to update automatically.
Update schedule	Sets a schedule to search for updates or to update when XCTU is started. If you select Look for updates on the following schedule, you must also specify the search interval and hour.
Download options	Establishes when new updates should download and sets permissions for whether updates are automatically downloaded.
When updates are found	Sets the frequency of update notification.

Consoles

Field	Description
API console	Configures the maximum number of API frames that can be displayed in the frames log during a session. When the maximum limit is reached, the session starts overwriting frames.
AT console	Configures the maximum number of bytes that can be displayed during a session. When the maximum limit is reached, the session starts overwriting bytes.

MadCap:autonum="<span style="color: #84c361;" class="mcFormatColor"><b>Note </b></span>">If you set high values for maximum API frames and/or AT bytes, you may notice performance issues in the consoles.

Firmware updates

Field	Description
Remote firmware update timeout	Configures the remote firmware update timeout in milliseconds. This value is the maximum time the application will wait for answers sent by the remote node during remote firmware update before concluding that there was an error during the process.

Network

You can configure Network view in the Network preferences dialog. The first four options are common to all networks:

Field	Description
Always clear the Network view before starting	Clears Network view before each new network scan.
Remove nodes if they were not discovered in the last performed scan	Removes any nodes not discovered in the last scan.
Stop after scan	Sets the number of scans to perform before stopping the discovery process. A value of '0' means the process will not stop automatically.
Time between scans	Sets the duration of time XCTU waits before starting a new network scan. The value must be between 0 and 300 seconds.

The remainder of the options are specific to 802.15.4, DigiMesh, and ZigBee network types:

Field	Description
Discovery mode	Sets the method used by the network discovery process. Flood: The neighbor discovery process is performed for every node at the moment it is found. Several discovery processes may be running at the same time. This method may be faster, but it may also generate a lot of traffic and saturate the network. Cascade: The neighbor discovery process is performed for every node as soon as the discovery process finishes. Only one discovery process runs at a time. This method may be slower, but it is likely to generate less traffic.
Neighbor discovery timeout	Sets the maximum duration, in seconds, the discovery process should spend finding neighbors of a module. Value must be between 5 and 1800 seconds (30 minutes). This timeout is highly dependent on the nature of the network. For DigiMesh, the value should be greater than the highest NT (Node Discover Timeout) and include enough time to let the message propagate, depending on the sleep cycle of your devices.
Time between requests	Sets the wait time between node neighbor requests. The value must be between 0 and 300 seconds (5 minutes). For the Cascade method, this is the number of seconds to wait after completion of the neighbor discovery process of the previous node. For the Flood method, this is the minimum time to wait between each radio module's neighbor requests.

Field

Description

Discovery mode

Sets the method used by the network discovery process.

Flood: The neighbor discovery process is performed for every node at the moment it is found. Several discovery processes may be running at the same time. This method may be faster, but it may also generate a lot of traffic and saturate the network.
Cascade: The neighbor discovery process is performed for every node as soon as the discovery process finishes. Only one discovery process runs at a time. This method may be slower, but it is likely to generate less traffic.

Neighbor discovery timeout

Sets the maximum duration, in seconds, the discovery process should spend finding neighbors of a module. Value must be between 5 and 1800 seconds (30 minutes).

This timeout is highly dependent on the nature of the network. For DigiMesh, the value should be greater than the highest NT (Node Discover Timeout) and include enough time to let the message propagate, depending on the sleep cycle of your devices.

Time between requests

Sets the wait time between node neighbor requests. The value must be between 0 and 300 seconds (5 minutes).

For the Cascade method, this is the number of seconds to wait after completion of the neighbor discovery process of the previous node.

For the Flood method, this is the minimum time to wait between each radio module's neighbor requests.

Note The Cascade discovery method is recommended for large networks.

Network appearance

You can configure how node links are represented in Network graphic view.

Field	Description
Connection default color	Defines the default color of the node's connection lines.
Show colored connections based on their quality	Enables or disables the coloring of node connection lines based on their link quality.
DigiMesh / ZigBee network	Enables you to modify the maximum and minimum values and RGB colors for each quality range. Click in the cell, type the value, and click Enter to change a value. Ranges include minimum values but not maximum values. When you change the minimum value of a quality range, the maximum value of the next range adopts a corresponding value.

Field

Description

Connection default color

Defines the default color of the node's connection lines.

Show colored connections based on their quality

Enables or disables the coloring of node connection lines based on their link quality.

DigiMesh / ZigBee network

Enables you to modify the maximum and minimum values and RGB colors for each quality range. Click in the cell, type the value, and click Enter to change a value.

Ranges include minimum values but not maximum values. When you change the minimum value of a quality range, the maximum value of the next range adopts a corresponding value.

Radio firmware library

You can instruct XCTU to look for new radio firmware when it starts up by checking Automatically update the XBee Firmware Library each time XCTU is started. If this option is disabled, you can only check for firmware updates manually.