Thursday, August 14, 2014

Arduino UNO nRF Adapter

nRF24L01 adapters


This blog entry is about my process in making an Arduino UNO nRF24L01 Adapter from start to the current version... ( If you would like to order a pair of the nRF Adapter, please click on nRF Adapter for Sale. )


Do you face the problems of messy jumpers cables like below when using nRF24L01+ with an Arduino UNO on a breadboard ??

nRF24L01 on breadboard
Or need to DIY your own adapter to sit in between the breadboard groove like the picture below ?

DIY nRF for breadboard

nRf24L01 on Arduino UNO

nRF24L01 with external antenna

With this problem, I started my journey to solve this problem with a nRF Adapter... below are pictures of the evolution of the adapter.

Perfboard first version

The orange and white wires fly across the UNO for the 3.3V power needed by the nRF24L01 radio.
nRF adpater with bottom wiring

nRF adapter with top wiring

PCB Version with 3.3V LDO ( PCB designed by ZXLee )

nRF20L01 adapter DIY PCB 1

nRF24L01 adapter DIY PCB 1

nRF24L01 adapter DIY PCB 1


PCB Version 2 with 2 buttons ( PCB designed by Vintronics )


nRF24L01 adapter DIY PCB 2 bottom

nRF24L01 adapter DIY PCB 2 top

We took the above design, dropped the 2 buttons , fine tuned it and made the final version for factory PCB. This is a joint collaboration project between Arduino for Beginners blog and Vintronics ..

Final factory made PCB version ( designed by Vintronics & myself )

This version have a AMS1117-3.3 at the bottom of the PCB.
nRF24L01 adapter PCB front

nRF24L01 adapter PCB back

Final version with headers soldered on PCB

nRF24L01 adapter PCB front

nRF24L01 adapter PCB back


nRF24L01 Adapter with radio

nRF24L01 adapter with radio

nRF24L01 adapter PCB with radio

nRF Adapter on Arduino UNO

The nRF adapter uses pin 8 for CE, pin 9 for CSN and pin 10 for Vcc (5V to 3.3V with the AMS1117-3.3V VR )

nRF Adapter on Arduino UNO

nRF Adapter on Arduino UNO
All the nRF adapters together ..

All nRF24L01 adapters

If you would like to order a pair of the nRF Adapter, please click on nRF Adapter for Sale.

Summary Links :-

- My RF24 repo fork with support of the nRF Adapter :  https://github.com/stanleyseow/RF24
- Test your nRF24L01 transfer speed https://github.com/stanleyseow/RF24/tree/master/examples/Transfer
- More info on nRF24L01 http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/Nrf24L01-2.4GHz-HowTo



Monday, May 12, 2014

TinySafeBoot on attiny84

The TinySafeBoot, this is a small bootloader that will take up 550 bytes so you are left with around 7450 bytes of sketch left. Let me explain a bit of details and instructions as the TinySafeBoot site were not catering to Arduino users in terms of step by steps instructions for beginners.

The reason to install this TinySafeBoot is pretty obvious, you can directly program the attiny84 similar like Arduino UNO using on Serial Tx/Rx pins instead of using the UsbTinyISP. I am connecting a FTDI USB Serial module for both programming and debugging functions using <TinyDebugSerial.h>.


Attiny84 with FTDI

The above image is my prototype attiny84 with FTDI module Serial Debug / Monitor to pin PB0(tx) and PB1(rx).

The steps are as follows :-

1. Download TinySafeBoot from http://jtxp.org/tech/tinysafeboot_en.htm

2. Generate the bootloader hex for attiny84 :-

tsb tn84 b1b0  ( b1 = pin PB1/rx b0 = pin PB0/tx )

3. Burn the above generated hex bootloader to the attiny84

avrdude -c usbtiny -p t84 -U flash:w:<tsb_tn84_b1b0_20140414.hex>

4. Set the fuse bits on attiny :

avrdude -c usbtiny -p t84 -U efuse:w:0xFE:m ( Turn on SELFPRGEN bits )

5. To get the status of the bootloader, RESET the attiny84, wait for 2-3 secs and execute the commands :-

tsb COM5 i  ( get current status from the bootloader )

or

6. To burn a hex to the attiny84, RESET the attiny84, wait for 2-3 secs and execute the commands :-

tsb COM5 fw blink84.hex

( You can compile the hex under Arduino UNO by choosing the board attiny84 @ 8Mhz and copy the hex files to the tsb folder. To see where the hex is compiled and located, Under Arduino IDE Preferences, Click on "Show verbose output during [x] compilation" )

Final product on Tiny nRF V1.0

Tiny nRF V1.0


Summary Links :-

- TinySafeBoot
- Attiny84 Fuse calculator http://eleccelerator.com/fusecalc/fusecalc.php?chip=attiny84
- Arduino Tiny codes https://code.google.com/p/arduino-tiny/
- Arduino Forum on attiny84/85 http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=115822.msg1698859#msg1698859


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