Hi,
Does somebody know if using a whip antenna will improve the RF transmission with the RF 24G ? If yes, how do we connect the antenna to the board ?
Thanks,
Hanz
It’s tricky. Simply soldering on a wire would probably do more to shorten then range than extend it. Impedance matching at 2.4GHz is black magic.
We are axniously (yea sp?) waiting for a shipment of smaller 2.4GHz antennas, SMA and RP-SMA end launch connectors. Once these arrive, we’ve got quite a lot of new products to post. A MiRF with an SMA connector and antenna will certainly get better range.
-Nathan
The TRF-24G clams that the range could go as far as 280mtrs with 250kbits transmission of data (not 1Mbits). Is this true?
That is the sales people at Nordic claiming 280m. Any engineer will laugh at that. Ideally yes, the nRF is capable of 280m. Real world is a bit different. You can get a solid 100m out of the RF-24G modules with their sneaky antenna.
-Nathan
sparky:
That is the sales people at Nordic claiming 280m. Any engineer will laugh at that. Ideally yes, the nRF is capable of 280m. Real world is a bit different. You can get a solid 100m out of the RF-24G modules with their sneaky antenna.
Does anyone have any information on what happens when you try to send data through a wall? I only need 10-20m, but through a wall. Do you think this is feasible with the RF-24G?
Thanks,
Dave
Does anyone have any information on what happens when you try to send data through a wall? I only need 10-20m, but through a wall. Do you think this is feasible with the RF-24G?
Thanks,
Dave[/quote]
2.4 gig acts more like light than the RF we know and love. It will tend to bounce off a dense material as opposed to penetrate it. I made video transmitter with 60 mW of RF output at 2.4. Reception was dicey through walls, and moving the antenna a fraction of an inch would affect the quality. Likewise, any moving body between the antennas could severly affect operation by creating multipath cancellation. With data transmission, you will need to write a subroutine to make sure the data arrived intact. Kind of like a receipt notification. Moving lower in frequency will help, as would upping transmit power. Perhaps our hosts could offer the 900 MHz version of the chip in a breakout board sometime in the future. I’d say try it, but don’t be too disapointed if it does not work well.
I bought the MiRF transceivers, and immedietly started playing with the antenna config. You can pretty easily make a little log antenna by soldering copper wire to the antenna lead at right angles. For my first try, I attached a 1" piece just after the antenna attaches to the board. 1/4" past this point, solder a 7/8" piece pointing the other way. The same length down, another piece on the original side @ 3/4" length. The last piece is 5/8".
On the ground side, solder a piece of copper foil the same width of the antenna trace, in line with it to the ground plane. Now attach pieces of wire to it, like the top, but extending out from the center in the opposite direction. As ugly as it is, I now have about 100 meter range. These type of antennas can be pretty easily etched right on a PC board of the right size, complete with transceiver chip. If I took the time to optimize radial length, I’m sure it could perform close to the 24G in range. Hope this helps…
Ron