Arduino for Beginners: Arduino UNO nRF Adapter

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

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.