Wednesday, January 7, 2009

New products added to store!

I would first like to thank everyone who has made a purchase at our store so far! I'm trying my best to keep some fresh products coming down the pike, so check out these new goodies!




Breakout for Nordic's new nRF24L01+ chip, which takes the nRF24L01 and adds a 250 kbps mode, longer range, and better sensitivity. The nRF24L01+ breakout with chip antenna version includes an on-board ceramic antenna for convenience.






For those who yearn for long range, you can go for the nRF24L01+ breakout with RP-SMA connector, which allows you to interface to high-gain RP-SMA antennas!




Speaking of RP-SMA antennas, we now carry a 5" 2.4 GHz RP-SMA duck antenna!

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12 Comments:

At January 19, 2009 at 7:08 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

So what's the nRF24L01 status regarding RF use? Will the FCC sue me if I use it without applying for a license ? :-)

How does it work with multiple transceivers in range? Currently I have 8 sensors triggering 8 indicators in a large hall. It would be nice if I could switch those to wireless, but would 8x2 transceivers be able to talk to their respective endpoints?

 
At January 20, 2009 at 7:43 AM , Blogger brennen said...

The only trouble you might be able to get into with the FCC regarding the 24L01+ (or 24LU1) chips is if you go too far up in the channel number. As I recall, the FCC limits you to 2480 or so MHz, so channels above 80 are technically illegal. Other countries have different rules on channels, so caveat emptor.

So long as you have designed your protocol properly, that wouldn't be difficult. You could actually put each sensor and trigger pair on its own channel, and then they wouldn't interfere with any other pair of devices. With my tutorials and include library, it would be pretty trivial.

 
At February 18, 2009 at 4:28 PM , Blogger Unknown said...

Brennen,

What kind of range are you seeing with the 24L01+'s? I have some different breakout boards here with them and I am not very impressed. Especially when they have to deal with multipath and close range but not LOS transmissions. What type of range do you see at the different baud rates?

 
At March 9, 2009 at 9:32 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

hi Anonymous,
Even if the 2.4GHz is called the "free" band, the FCC still wants to control it. commercial products still must prove they coexist and play well with BlueTooth, zigbee, WIFI...
Marty

 
At March 15, 2009 at 4:07 PM , Blogger Unknown said...

Do the receivers suffer from multipath fading? Usually a diversity antenna/preamp combo is required on the receiver to minimize this.

Also how many transmitters can run simultaneously at 1Mbps?

You ought to get Mouser or Digikey to distribute your breakout board. They don't seem to have anything like this yet or do they?

 
At March 16, 2009 at 8:57 AM , Blogger brennen said...

sTiZZiT - As far as range goes, I'm seeing something on the order of 60 meters being pretty reasonable distance for both the 24LU1 and 24L01+ chip antenna boards. I haven't actually tested the RP-SMA boards, though, because their range is very dependent upon the antenna that is attached.

Anonymous - I'm not really sure how to respond to that statement, given that it's pretty much just an anti-FCC rant.

electronjunkie - I haven't tested multipath fading on the receivers, so I can't really offer much advice there. Nordic's tech support would be better-suited for that question.

In theory, you could run up to 128 transmitters at a time at 1 Mbps, provided they are all on different channels. Just for clarity, you could only run 64 units at 2 Mbps, because you have to have 2 MHz between channels (opposed to 1 MHz at 1 Mbps).

Strangely, I hadn't even thought about trying to get with Digikey or Mouser for a distribution deal. I'll consider that.

 
At March 16, 2009 at 10:25 AM , Blogger Unknown said...

Thanks for the reply.

Its really easy to do a simple, practical test with multipath fading. Saturate the link with data and move the transmitter or receiver while well within range of the other end of the link. If there is dataloss, then multipath fading is a problem and a diversity receiver design may be necessary.

 
At May 26, 2009 at 2:06 AM , Anonymous daymist said...

Hi,Brennen. What's about the valid communication distance for your 24L01+ module with chip antenna?

 
At June 1, 2009 at 6:48 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have a few questions about the functionality of the nRF24L01. I'm thinking about using it in an audio application. With this device would I be capable of sampling the output of an mp3 player and transmitting wirelessly to multiple transceivers at the same time? I'm thinking if I sampled with a 16 bit ADC at 22 khz I'd be at around 700 kbs (stereo)...This is less then the advertised 2Mbs over air but I'm not 100% clear on all the overhead that goes into the packeting of data.

Also..great site! I'll be using your tutorials for sure!

 
At August 20, 2009 at 5:13 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I really don't understand why these same nRF modules cost this much.
An equivalent module from Decibit is
going for $8.15 DCBT-24N & with
+19dBm (79mW) Power Amp for $16.46.
Do note that these modules come with
the nRF24L01 & not the nRF24L01+.

 
At September 29, 2009 at 11:44 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi brennen.

It's a nice site you've got. You get a plus for all the pics. Have you ever tried any of the Texas Instruments (Chipcon) radios? E.g. the < 1 GHz variants that should give you a lot better range?

 
At November 18, 2009 at 11:07 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just wanted to say thank you very very much! We are using this radio as part of our SR. Design project and your code and tutorials saved us hundreds of hours of anguish. It still took 60 or so hours to port the code to a 16f887 and get it working, mainly due to little issues with delays, uart, spi and what not, but we now have the two modules up and running and are super excited. Thanks again for taking the time to create the tutorials!

 

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