nRF24L01+ Arduino Communication on Arduino Mega 2560

Disclaimer: Note the last paragraph.

In my quest to explore inter-Arduino communications, I bought 2 nRF24L01+ modules. These are pretty neat radios. From what I have read, they are AM. They can be used with key fob remotes or in a network of up to 6 modules. They are also very cheap. My 2 were $3 on Ebay, but many vendors sell them.

When I first began working with these modules I needed a way to interface with them. Wanting to
breadboard at least one of them, I created the adapter shown to the right. It isn't a perfect solution. The module itself gets in the way of wiring slightly, but my jumpers fit in there good enough.

Next I loaded the RF24 Library. HERE is a blog post by maniacbug that details using the module on an Arduino Uno. It is very useful. THIS page also helped. However, I don't have an Uno. I only have an Arduino Mega 2560. This means that we need to change a few things.

First, we need to change the pins. The Arduino Mega's SPI pins are in different positions than the Arduino Uno. You can figure these out pretty well or you can look below.
          Uno           Mega

• 11       -      51            (MOSI)
• 12       -      50            (MISO)
• 13       -      52            (SCK)
• 10       -      53            (CSN)
• 9         -      40 (Your choice) (CE)

Another note, IRQ is not needed for anything I will be discussing. Just leave it unplugged. 

Second, the code needs to be changed slightly.

RF24 radio(9,10);        needs to be changed to      RF24 radio (40, 53);

On the receiving end, I decided to use my Hackduino. Since it is basically an Arduino Uno, the pins are wired the same, and the example code does not need to be changed at all.

However, I did have the problem of needing a 3.3V power supply. Well a few minutes and a Google search later I found THIS calculator and built my first voltage divider circuit. I used a 470 Ohm resistor between 5v and output. 220 and 22 Ohm resistors in series (for a total of 242 Ohms) were placed between output and ground. I read it with a volt meter and it was right on the money, 3v3.

3.3v voltage divider
Black: GND   White: 5v    Green: 3.3v output

Well here goes nothing. Open the serial monitor and type t. I got this screen.

The first part of that is fine. The second is not.

Well I did some digging. While I had found two forum threads (HERE and HERE), I had not found them terribly useful. They came to the conclusion that he Arduino Mega power supply was the problem. While this may be the case, no combination of capadcitors seemed to fix it. I also went on to try the power supply from my Hackduino, 2 AA batteries, and the 3.3V supply on my breadboard power supply. None of these things worked.

I did successfully get it to send once, but I have no idea how. It just worked. I unplugged the USB and plugged it back in, and it didn't work. I have rung out every jumper I am using and have tested all the pins with an LED. I swapped my two RF modules out. Same problems. At this point, I really have no clue what the problem is. I don't have an Arduino other than this one to try it on. I also don't have a variable power supply to test with.

Well that's all I have. I admit that I am quite disappointed with myself for posting an unsuccessful project. I don't know if I will continue working on it or not, but if I do get it working I will post an update. I may try the Mirf library, but we will see. I only paid a few dollars for these modules, and if they are bad I don't want to waste any more time on it. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to comment. Regardless of my apparent failure, I still learned quite a bit in this endeavor. I hope you have better luck!

-Matthew