Arduino NRF24L01+ arduino to netmf transmit issue

Question

I want to communicate between Arduino Mini Pro (china import) and a stm32f4 running netmf runtime. At the moment I'm able to communicate between SPI1 and SPI2 on the stm32 board.

After that I switched on the Arduino. I'm using the RF24 library and modified the GettingStarted sample to simply open pipes and send the same byte array again and again to the stm32.

It works for the first transmit but after that I did not receive any interrupts on the receiver side.

Both NRF24L01+ are power supplied by a breadboard power supply module which supplies 500ma (max USB bus). The Arduino is connected and power supplied by a CP2102 USB/Serial adapter.

NETMF Address: 0F0F0F0F0F Arduino Address: 0F0F0F0F0E

As arduino uses little endian, I reverse the bytes on stm32 side before writing the address into the pipe. But I'm already unsure if I need that step (adding the Arduino address on netmf side).

Here's my Arduino code:

#include <SPI.h>
#include "nRF24L01.h"
#include "RF24.h"
#include "printf.h"

RF24 radio(9,10);

const int payload_size = 4;
const char payload[] = "PING";

void setup(void)
{

    Serial.begin(57600);
    printf_begin();
    radio.begin();
    radio.enableDynamicPayloads();
    radio.setChannel(77);
    radio.setAutoAck(true);
    radio.setRetries(15,15);
    radio.setDataRate(RF24_2MBPS);
    radio.openWritingPipe((uint64_t)0x0F0F0F0F0FLL);
    radio.openReadingPipe(1,(uint64_t)0x0F0F0F0F0ELL);
    radio.stopListening();
    radio.printDetails();
}

void loop(void)
{
    unsigned long time = millis();
    bool ok = radio.write( payload, payload_size );

    if (ok)
        printf("SUCCESS %lu...\n",time);
    else
        printf("fail %lu...\n",time);

    // Try again 1s later
    delay(1000);

}

Here's my NETmf code

NRF24L01Plus _module = new NRF24L01Plus();


public override void Init()
{
    _module.Initialize(SPI_Devices.SPI2, Pins.GPIO_PIN_D_8, Pins.GPIO_PIN_D_10, Pins.GPIO_PIN_B_12);
    _module.Configure(new byte[] { 0x0F, 0x0F, 0x0F, 0x0F, 0x0F }, 77, NRFDataRate.DR2Mbps);

    // both handlers are never executed
    _module.OnDataReceived += this.OnReceive;
    _module.OnInterrupt += _module2_OnInterrupt;

    _module.Enable();

}

Answer 1

I have a couple of projects that use the NRF24L01+ and the RF24 Library.

As I mentioned in my comment, the examples provided is not asynchronous. I am not sure if the library supports asynchronous operations. Nevertheless, in your example, one radio should be in transmit mode and the other receive. If you look at the examples, the author uses modes (role_ping_out and role_ping_back). Basicly, the author wrote the code so you can both send and receive. But you can't do send and receive at the same time.

If you look at the example cope in the library, you can see where you need to stop receiving and start sending:

radio.stopListening();

// Send the final one back.
printf("Sent response.\n\r");
radio.write( &got_time, sizeof(unsigned long) );

// Now, resume listening so we catch the next packets.
radio.startListening();

And on the other radio stop sending and start receiving:

radio.startListening();

// Wait here until we get a response, or timeout (250ms)
unsigned long started_waiting_at = __millis();
bool timeout = false;
while ( ! radio.available() && ! timeout ) {
__msleep(30); //add a small delay to let radio.available to check payload
  if (__millis() - started_waiting_at > 200 )
    timeout = true;
}

// Describe the results
if ( timeout )
{
  printf("Failed, response timed out.\n\r");
}
else
{
  // Grab the response, compare, and send to debugging spew
  unsigned long got_time;
  radio.read( &got_time, sizeof(unsigned long) );

  // Spew it
  printf("Got response %lu, round-trip delay: %lu\n\r",got_time,__millis()-got_time);
}

If this is a bit confusing, I would suggest you load the Getting Started example on both your radios. Once you get that working, you can get a better idea on how it works.

Good Luck