Development of Non-Arduino-Based Applications

[GBuchwitz]

Hi. I'm new to both the nRF24L01+ and to this forum.

I'm intrigued by the prospect of using these amazing little transceivers as RF modems. Because I find elements of the device's datasheet to be difficult to understand, I've been looking for tutorials. So far I've found that virtually all of the YouTube tutorials on this device appear to be Arduino based.

I like the Arduino, but I don't necessarily want to be anchored to it. I'd appreciate it if someone could please recommend training resources that might help me develop an application for an alternate microcontroller (e.g. a PIC). Thanks!

[ovrebekk]

Hi

Welcome to the forum :)

I would start by taking a look at the good old nAN24-12 application note.

This includes a pdf describing the various ShockBurst modes in the radio, and a code example (based on an ST 8051 MCU) showing how to use the nRF24L01+.

The appnote assumes that you have the nRF24L01(+) development kit, but I think it is still valuable even if you don't have it.

Once you have read the PDF you can try to port the software examples to your MCU. The most important file is hal_nrf_l01.c, which provides a low level abstraction of the various configuration registers in the nRF24L01+.
You also need to provide an implementation of hal_nrf_xxx_hw.c, which is the SPI abstraction layer that you need to implement specifically for your SPI hardware.

The radio_xx.c and application_xx.c files show you how you can use the low level HAL to access the radio and send/receive data.

Best regards
Torbjørn Øvrebekk