New products added to store!

I would first like to thank everyone who has made a purchase at our store so far! I'm trying my best to keep some fresh products coming down the pike, so check out these new goodies!

Breakout for Nordic's new nRF24L01+ chip, which takes the nRF24L01 and adds a 250 kbps mode, longer range, and better sensitivity. The nRF24L01+ breakout with chip antenna version includes an on-board ceramic antenna for convenience.

For those who yearn for long range, you can go for the nRF24L01+ breakout with RP-SMA connector, which allows you to interface to high-gain RP-SMA antennas!

Speaking of RP-SMA antennas, we now carry a 5" 2.4 GHz RP-SMA duck antenna!

Store is open!

It's an exciting day! The new e-store, available at http://store.diyembedded.com/ is open with a whopping two products! I will be expanding products as fast as I can, but for the time being here's what we have.

An updated breakout of the prior nRF24LU1 module, the nRF24LU1 Stamp Breakout with Chip Antenna plugs into an 18-pin wide DIP socket and has all of the important support components to get you up and running!

If the range of the chip antenna module isn't enough for you, I've also developed the nRF24LU1 Stamp Breakout with RP-SMA Connector. This guy has all of the same features as the chip antenna module, but it allows you to plug in high-gain external antennae to get longer range!


Also, I've set up a support forum that can be found at http://forum.diyembedded.com. There are forums set up for the products I sell, as well as other forums for general interest. Any comments are welcome!

Bootloader v0 release and maybe boards for sale

I am considering selling the extra boards that I have right now. I have 15 boards that I have not soldered on, etc. I am thinking about selling these boards for $40 (fully assembled and tested). If you wanted the programmer board with a cable, that would probably be another $10. I haven't been able to successfully write a programmer program because my parallel port is messed up. I have one I think works, but I would have to either get another parallel port (not too expensive) or else let somebody else try it. If anyone would be interested in purchasing a board, I plan on burning in a bootloader program previous to shipping the board, which uses the RS-232 port to upload user programs. Please leave comments if you'd be interested in a board so I can gauge response to see if it's worth ordering the extra parts.

The on-chip bootloader is written in assembly (yuck) and lives in the highest page of flash (starts at address 0x3E00). It uses the UART to communicate to the program that was written for the PC in C# to get its data. The program was written with the potential to be expanded, but that framework hasn't been developed yet in order to get it done quickly.

The only rub with using the bootloader is that, unless you can time hitting the RESET button really well, you need to add a green-wire fix to allow the RTS line from the RS-232 port to control the RESET pin on the nRF24LU1. This is relatively easy, and I will put up a schematic and pictures if anybody were to need it.

On-Chip Bootloader
The bootloader was written to be compiled with AS31, which can be downloaded (with a special version of SDCC) here. The link to the .zip file containing the makefile, asm source file, and compiled hex file can be found here.

PC-Side Bootloader
The bootloader program on the PC-side was written in C# for Windows (Linux guys are on their own). This version was written with Visual Studio 2005 Professional, but it can also be compiled using Visual C# 2008 Express, which is a free download from here. The link to the .zip file containing the C# project, source files, and executable file can be found here.

Edit: I now have nRF24LU1 breakout boards for sale at http://store.diyembedded.com!

nRF24LU1 board is alive and well

So I swear I'm not dead. I have been working hard on writing code for the 24LU1 board. I have a lot of software working now, and I just wanted to post a video of this guy in action. The only problems I've found with the board are that the /RST LED was supposed to be wired in active low configuration, but I ended up doing it like all the other LEDs (it's on all the time *except* when you push the reset button).



Edit: I now have nRF24LU1 breakout boards for sale at http://store.diyembedded.com!

New Blog Subscription Link and Boo on Advanced Circuits

After getting a request to have a subscription to the blog, I've finally found a way to do it by using a Google group. All you have to do is put your email into the box on the right side of the main page, click "Subscribe", and then click the link in the email that is sent to you to confirm the subscription.

So I was initially going to send the nRF24LU1 board off to Advanced Circuits, but apparently they don't allow panelization on their boards. Totally uncool. So I cancelled my order and I'm going to go with Gold Phoenix this time around, and I'm also going to have them make the programmer/prototyping board I'm working on. That should be up in a day or two. Hopefully this will actually work.

Edit: I now have nRF24LU1 breakout boards for sale at http://store.diyembedded.com!

New nRF24LU1 board on the way...

Hey guys. Sorry for the delay, but I've been pretty busy making a layout for the new nRF24LU1 chip from Nordic. I have sent the board off to have some prototype PCBs made (12 for the first run in case I made some mistakes in the schematic/layout). For all of you guys that are interested, I have published the schematic and layout. Hopefully I will be selling these guys once I get them up and working properly.

Edit: I now have nRF24LU1 breakout boards for sale at http://store.diyembedded.com!

New project with new chip (nRF24LU1)

I have decided to use one of the suggestions from the previous post for the next project. In case you didn't know, Nordic recently released a new chip that takes the 24L01 and on the same chip adds an 8051 core, 16 kB of EEPROM for program memory, and an AES encryption coprocessor. It also has 6 GPIO pins, that can also be multiplexed with other features, such as hardware SPI and UART.

I am going to try to lay out a board and get SDCC or some other compiler to generate code for the 8051 core. If any of you guys are familiar with 8051 coding (especially in C using some freely available compiler), then I would definitely like to hear from you (the easiest way is to make comments on this post).

This project is going to be quite an undertaking, and once I get my stuff working I will try to start making some boards for purchase. There will also have to be some sort of programmer module, since programming the chip initially requires that it be done over SPI. If I can get a bootloader going, I am going to try to get USB up and running on the chip, so that it can be programmed that way.

It may be a while before I get this done (or even a large amount of progress). Be patient and watch for updates occasionally.

Edit: I now have nRF24LU1 breakout boards for sale at http://store.diyembedded.com!