helo:)
I have seen “Transceiver nRF24L01+ Module with RP-SMA” at sparkfun and it seems intresting But im just wondering if this product exist in 868Mhz and 433Mhz also.
I found on Nordic website that they do produce both nRF902 RF/nRF905 RF, but i could not find finish modules,only the chips and the dev.kits are really expensive
Thanks
Low cost modules for the other chips might be made, but the nRF24L01+ is a lot more popular. The other chips are getting rather old, now, and other manufacturers have newer and better devices.
Newest HopeRF modules are nice, arguably more sophisticated than Nordic.
Me, I prefer choosing among the many interoperable 802.15.4 module vendors, sans ZigBee,l rather than these proprietary modules, unless you want to trade standards/interoperability for cost.
Nordic nRF24L01 chips are standard in a way, nearly all wireless keyboards and mice use them.
I liked the nRF24L01, but in my project i need a transmitter that can send around 150m i with some trees in between.
Therefore i was thinking of 868Mhz and 433.
I believe nordic only make chips for the 2.4Ghz worldwide band, and the 900Mhz US band. The 868Mhz and 433/4Mhz bands are european standards, not US, and are falling out of favour with consumer electronics manufacturers who wish to sell their products ‘world wide’ without having to make changes to devices shipped to different countries.
150m open air (not in a building) but with tree’s is certainly doable, and as you probably know already, a range 2.4Ghz devices were never really intended for.
As you’re in the UK, I can highly recommend Low Power Radio Solutions http://www.lprs.co.uk
They make ‘intelligent’ 868/433 modules, available either as tx/rx pair, or transceivers. They interface using a standard UART, and do all the packeting/RF for you, effectively making a wireless RS232 link. The modules are available either direct from them, or from Rapid electornics (quite cheap). I’m not trying to plug the company or anything, its just I have used these in quite a number of projects and they have proved invaluable, reliable, easy to use, and cost efficient. As for support, last time I emailed, I got called by the guy who designed the modules (!!).
You could always just purchase the ‘cheaper’ 868/433 modules, but that would require you to develop your own interface, using manchester encoding. The only caveat with the above modules is the range, I believe they max out at around 100m open air. If you link is simplex, one way, then you can always use RF amplifiers on the antenna’s…or, if you wish, I believe LPRS do the same modules but with 1km+ range. (with the same error detection/resending corrupt packets etc…)
Good luck, and apologies if it seems like I am steering things away from the ‘nordic’ subject, but their wonderful chips are really designed for short range, high data rate, networked links. (which thy seem to do remarkably well I might add).
BuriedCode
Radiometrix makes some useful modules. They conform to EU and US standards. I think they will give a 150 m range, with properly designed antennas.