The dev kits are basically a motherboard for the Xbee radios, provides a easy method to get RS232 into the module.  It also has the abilty to reset the module back to factory values I think...and a DIP switch for some other parameters and of course a power supply to take the 9V down to 3.3V.  So building a board that has the connector, a DC source and a RS232 transiever on it (I ask Maxim about once a quarter for samples of the capacitor-less version) and you have pretty much the same thing.  On board the Xbee is a freescale micro I believe, and the zigbee radio chip (don't recall who's they are using...believe its the same one the is on the Mchip dev system) and you can use AT like commands to talk to the chip, setting up the addressing, power, etc for it.  The nice thing about the Xbee is that its all built into the module.....just interface with  3.3V TTL (NOT 5V for the Xbee products) straight from the micro UART and your done.  Of course if you need to talk to the PIC o!
 ver RS232
 you need to use a chip either with dual UARTS or mux the data stream.  
   
  Once you have two of them built up, setting the MY addressing to open broadcasts, its just a simple wireless interface and can send data back and forth....pretty slick.
   
   

			
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