I have been testing some Hope RFM95W long range wireless radios and I’m seeing about 1 mile range capabilities.
I figure this would be a great way to add sensors to the Photon or Electron which can then push that data out over the Particle Cloud to the web.
I’m building products that could use this radio along with the Photon or Electron so its in my best interested to just embed this radio into the same product PCB that will have the Photon or Electron on board also to keep cost down, no need for a extra micro processor on board.
I see there is a library for a Hope RFM69 in the Build Library now but the chipsets are different so some modifications or major modifications my be needed.
I figure it might be best to just attempt to port the Radio Head library for the RFM95w chip that is documented here:
I have $100 or whatever is reasonable for anybody who can get this ported over properly, I have no idea how hard or easy it may be.
The code below is for the basic TX and RX example modes with no data loss retries which is also avaliable and is really what I want to get working but I figure getting the easiest example up and running would be the best way to start.
The code comes from the RadioHead library below.
http://www.airspayce.com/mikem/arduino/RadioHead/
Here is the test code used for the RX receiver radio + Atmel 32u4:
// Atmel32u4 95_RX
// -*- mode: C++ -*-
// Example sketch showing how to create a simple messaging client (receiver)
// with the RH_RF95 class. RH_RF95 class does not provide for addressing or
// reliability, so you should only use RH_RF95 if you do not need the higher
// level messaging abilities.
// It is designed to work with the other example Feather9x_TX
#include <SPI.h>
#include <RH_RF95.h>
/* for feather32u4 */
#define RFM95_CS 8
#define RFM95_RST 4
#define RFM95_INT 7
// Change to 434.0 or other frequency, must match RX's freq!
#define RF95_FREQ 915.0
// Singleton instance of the radio driver
RH_RF95 rf95(RFM95_CS, RFM95_INT);
// Blinky on receipt
#define LED 13
void setup()
{
pinMode(LED, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RFM95_RST, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(RFM95_RST, HIGH);
//while (!Serial);
Serial.begin(9600);
delay(100);
Serial.println("Feather LoRa RX Test!");
// manual reset
digitalWrite(RFM95_RST, LOW);
delay(10);
digitalWrite(RFM95_RST, HIGH);
delay(10);
while (!rf95.init()) {
Serial.println("LoRa radio init failed");
while (1);
}
Serial.println("LoRa radio init OK!");
// Defaults after init are 434.0MHz, modulation GFSK_Rb250Fd250, +13dbM
if (!rf95.setFrequency(RF95_FREQ)) {
Serial.println("setFrequency failed");
while (1);
}
Serial.print("Set Freq to: "); Serial.println(RF95_FREQ);
// Defaults after init are 434.0MHz, 13dBm, Bw = 125 kHz, Cr = 4/5, Sf = 128chips/symbol, CRC on
// The default transmitter power is 13dBm, using PA_BOOST.
// If you are using RFM95/96/97/98 modules which uses the PA_BOOST transmitter pin, then
// you can set transmitter powers from 5 to 23 dBm:
rf95.setTxPower(23, false);
}
void loop()
{
if (rf95.available())
{
// Should be a message for us now
uint8_t buf[RH_RF95_MAX_MESSAGE_LEN];
uint8_t len = sizeof(buf);
if (rf95.recv(buf, &len))
{
digitalWrite(LED, HIGH);
//RH_RF95::printBuffer("Received: ", buf, len);
Serial.print("Got: ");
Serial.println((char*)buf);
Serial.print("RSSI: ");
Serial.println(rf95.lastRssi(), DEC);
// Send a reply
uint8_t data[] = "And hello back to you";
rf95.send(data, sizeof(data));
rf95.waitPacketSent();
Serial.println("Sent a reply");
Serial.println("---------");
digitalWrite(LED, LOW);
}
else
{
Serial.println("Receive failed");
Serial.println("");
}
}
}
And here is the example code for the TX transmitter module:
// Atmel32u4 95_TX
// -*- mode: C++ -*-
// Example sketch showing how to create a simple messaging client (transmitter)
// with the RH_RF95 class. RH_RF95 class does not provide for addressing or
// reliability, so you should only use RH_RF95 if you do not need the higher
// level messaging abilities.
// It is designed to work with the other example Feather9x_RX
#include <SPI.h>
#include <RH_RF95.h>
/* for atmel32u4 */
#define RFM95_CS 8
#define RFM95_RST 4
#define RFM95_INT 7
*/
// Change to 434.0 or other frequency, must match RX's freq!
#define RF95_FREQ 915.0
// Singleton instance of the radio driver
RH_RF95 rf95(RFM95_CS, RFM95_INT);
void setup()
{
pinMode(RFM95_RST, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(RFM95_RST, HIGH);
//while (!Serial);
Serial.begin(9600);
delay(100);
Serial.println("Feather LoRa TX Test!");
// manual reset
digitalWrite(RFM95_RST, LOW);
delay(10);
digitalWrite(RFM95_RST, HIGH);
delay(10);
while (!rf95.init()) {
Serial.println("LoRa radio init failed");
while (1);
}
Serial.println("LoRa radio init OK!");
// Defaults after init are 434.0MHz, modulation GFSK_Rb250Fd250, +13dbM
if (!rf95.setFrequency(RF95_FREQ)) {
Serial.println("setFrequency failed");
while (1);
}
Serial.print("Set Freq to: "); Serial.println(RF95_FREQ);
// Defaults after init are 434.0MHz, 13dBm, Bw = 125 kHz, Cr = 4/5, Sf = 128chips/symbol, CRC on
// The default transmitter power is 13dBm, using PA_BOOST.
// If you are using RFM95/96/97/98 modules which uses the PA_BOOST transmitter pin, then
// you can set transmitter powers from 5 to 23 dBm:
rf95.setTxPower(23, false);
}
int16_t packetnum = 0; // packet counter, we increment per xmission
void loop()
{
Serial.println("Sending to rf95_server");
// Send a message to rf95_server
char radiopacket[20] = "Hello World # ";
itoa(packetnum++, radiopacket+13, 10);
Serial.print("Sending "); Serial.println(radiopacket);
radiopacket[19] = 0;
Serial.println("Sending..."); delay(10);
rf95.send((uint8_t *)radiopacket, 20);
Serial.println("Waiting for packet to complete..."); delay(10);
rf95.waitPacketSent();
// Now wait for a reply
uint8_t buf[RH_RF95_MAX_MESSAGE_LEN];
uint8_t len = sizeof(buf);
Serial.println("Waiting for reply..."); delay(10);
if (rf95.waitAvailableTimeout(1000))
{
// Should be a reply message for us now
if (rf95.recv(buf, &len))
{
Serial.print("Got reply: ");
Serial.println((char*)buf);
Serial.print("RSSI: ");
Serial.println(rf95.lastRssi(), DEC);
}
else
{
Serial.println("Receive failed");
}
}
else
{
Serial.println("No reply, is there a listener around?");
}
delay(1000);
}
Here is a link to the .H file, its too long to post here: http://www.airspayce.com/mikem/arduino/RadioHead/RH__RF95_8h_source.html