Contemporary use of many NRF24L01

[Luca Panzetti]

For a project under development I used two NRF24L01 for testing and they work very well.

Now I would like to know if: is it possible to use one NRF24L01 as TX and several dozen NRF24L01 as RX ?

Only one device at a time is in transmitter mode (TX), all the others are listening (RX).

Luca Panzetti

[ovrebekk]

Hi Luca

This is possible, yes, but if you want a single transmitter to send a packet to multiple receivers it is recommended to disable the ACK mechanism. 

The reason for this is that the ACK mechanism won't work properly when multiple receivers try to send an ACK at the same time. 

Best regards
Torbjørn

[Luca Panzetti]

Hi Torbjørn

how long will the NRF24L01 stay on the market ?

For power consumption is it better to use the NRF24L01 with an ATTINY Cpu or directly use the nRF52810 with the ANT protocol ?

thanks in advance.

Best Regards

Luca Panzetti

[ovrebekk]

Hi Luca

We don't have a planned end of life for the nRF24L01. In general we try to produce our devices as long as people are still buying them in meaningful volumes, but since we are a fabless semiconductor company we are dependent on our production partners (like TSMC) to offer the production nodes that we are using (180nm for the nRF24L01). 

For this reason we can only guarantee a 12 month warning in case we have to end of life a product, so that you have some time to put in the last orders. 

The nRF52810 is much better than the nRF24L01 when it comes to power consumption. The radio peak currents are less than half compared to the nRF24L01, and the CPU currents are also very competitive. 
Having the radio and the MCU on the same chip also means you don't have to waste any current running the SPI interface betweenthe nRF24L01 and the host MCU. 

Best regards
Torbjørn

[Luca Panzetti]

Hi Torbjørn

Is the 2.4 GHz proprietary protocol present in the nRF52 series the same as that used in the nRF24L01 chip? can nRF52 series chips talk to nRF24L01 using this protocol?

Best Regards

Luca Panzetti

[ovrebekk]

Hi Luca

The radio in the nRF52 series is much more flexible than the one in the nRF24L01, in order to implement more different RF protocols, but can communicate with nRF24L01 devices when using the nrf_esb protocol. 

If you are planning to use the dynamic payload length feature in the nRF24L01, then the nRF52 device running the nrf_esb library will be 100% compatible. 

If you are planning to use the nRF24L01 with static payload length, or with ACK disabled, then there are some limitation in the nrf_esb library. 

In other words I recommend using dynamic payload length if you need the nRF52 and the nRF24L01 to be compatible. 

Best regards
Torbjørn