profmason.com

May 17, 2007

Wireless Picaxe

Filed under: Electronics, PicAXE — profmason @ 9:34 pm

tlp418a.jpgI wired up a 418 Mhz transmitter to a Picaxe 08M tonight. I can get the output of the PicAXE sent via wireless to a 418 Mhz receiver and see the output on the serial port. I bought the transmitter/receiver ages ago from Futurelec, but they didn’t include any documentation! I struggled for quite a while to get it to work and stopped in frustration. I was browsing the web and found a tutorial on the Sparkfun website that worked great! klp_walkthrough.pdf Next time I will buy from Sparkfun!

Now to try to send data to the PicAxe 08M wirelessly!

A couple of hours later, this is proving difficult. I can program the PicAXE wirelessly if I reset the power at the start of the programming cycle. While in transmit mode, there is lots of noise on the serial out line. A couple of ideas here:

  1. 418 MHz is now used by cellular phones so there may be external interference.
  2. The Picaxe maual has some promising leads.

To be continued!

So another evening of fighting with this thing.  I had very little luck transmitting to the PicAXE. Noise was so bad I instituted a checksum and had 80% of my packets rejected!!! I have ordered a 433 Mhz transmitter from Sparkfun.

2 Comments »

  1. [...] transmitter that sends the appropriate commands to the onboard processor. I previously was using a 418Mhz transmitter and was getting swamped with noise. I bought a 240C wireless USB camera. It arrived today. The [...]

    Pingback by profmason.com » Wireless WebCam — May 21, 2007 @ 8:54 pm

  2. [...] several previous attempts to make a serial wireless system, I finally have something that works. Previously I had used modules from Futurelec and Sparkfun. [...]

    Pingback by profmason.com » XBEE wireless modules — October 22, 2007 @ 9:58 pm

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