I have 2 SparcFun MiRF transceivers. One wired to a PIC18f252 and the other to a SparkFun Olimex LPC-H2214. The reliability was not very good. The error rate was approx 20% at 3 feet. This weekend I changed the input power to the LPC-H2214 from 5 volts to 9 volts.
The following summaries one experiment (best results).
Setup:
Bit Rate = 250K, Addr = 5 byte, message length = 17 bytes, crc = 2
Transmitter (2214) continuously transmits data every 25 msec.
Receiver (18f252) monitors 10,000 packets.
Distance Error
6" 0.3%
1’ 0.3%
2’ 1.2%
5’ 1.7%
10" 4.8%
15" 21.1%
A second experiement where the pic echos the message back to the 2214 for purposes
of measuring secure message speed results in > 2000 bytes per second if within 3 feet.
George
a first simple thing would be to check if the last capacitor before antenna is actually sodered onto the antenna strip. mine were not, and when i did solder it on my range went from 15 feet to 120 feet at 95% packet rate.
if this doesnt not help then check if your setup is at 256kbps insted of 1mbps as i hear 1mbps is quite lossy
also check previous post with similar questions, you may find an answer there
take care
Thanks. I saw the prior posts regarding the caps and assumed that it was a
once only event. Guess what? One of my units was clearly unsoldered and the
other was mechanically tight. Soldered both and have a dramitic improvemnet in
reliability.
Now I have to undo the “software fixes” that were implemented to get the previous
performance!!!
George