Will serial gateway work with 3.3 V Arduino Pro Mini?

[Thomas433]

Hi.

Will serial gateway work with 3.3 V Arduino Pro Mini (8 MHz)?
In the code it states: * The GW code is designed for Arduino Nano 328p / 16MHz

My goal is to have an Arduino Uno (5V) as a serial gateway, but since I don't succeed with that in spite of logic level converters on the MOSI, SCK and NSS, I wanted to try and get it working on a 3.3V Pro Mini so the logic level conversion complexity disappears.
I understand that the 8 MHz may be insufficient for a gateway with many nodes in the long run, but this is just a short term test to achieve at least some kind of success with the RFM69 module, which has so far been the cause of many headaches.

I have got an Arduino Nano working with NRF24 with several nodes, but since I only have five NRF24 modules and maybe 30 RFM69 modules (and thick concrete walls in a big house) my goal is to use RFM69 (433 MHz).

Also - is a capacitor necessary on the RFM69 module?
I know it is necessary on the NRF24, but it is not clear in the instructions if this is the case on RFM69.

[skywatch]

@Thomas433 I have used uno and now pro mini (5v) for gateway. I tried 3.3V bu ran into problems with that set up which forced me to go down the route to 5V modules.

For UNO you should only need to put the gateway serial sketch on it and plug it into the pi usb port and then tell your controller to connect to that usb port. I am running with 2 x pro mini gateways, one for security detection devices and the other for everything else.

[Thomas433]

Thanks for the answer.
I actually got the Arduino Pro Mini 3.3 Volt 8MHz to work as a Mysensors gateway to Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 4b after many challenges (bad radios, bad connections etc.).
Next challenge is then the 3.3 V vs 5 V logic converters.

[TheoL]

@Thomas433 The 5V version can run on 16Mhz the 3.3V max is 8Mhz. This will infect the amount of traffic it can handle. I use an Arduino Uno for at least 5 years and it never failed. An arduino Nano will also work. The nano and uno have a 3.3v regulator on board which makes powering the radio easier you don't need to add an power regulator. Not sure why you need the logic level converters though

[Thomas433]

@TheoL Thanks for responding and sorry for my late reply.
I finally got an Arduino Nano working as a gateway with RFM69.
It required new/different logic converters as the ones I had apparently were not working correctly.
I can give the RFM69 3.3V power from the Nano, but as the Nano has 5V logic and the RFM69 cannot handle 5V logic as input (NSS, SCK, MOSI) , the logic converters are needed to protect the RFM69 module as also stated in the MySensors radio guide.
I must say that using NRF24 was much easier than using RFM69, but I will stick with RFM69 (433 MHz) for range reasons.