nRF24L01+PA+LNA hangs my software but transmits when PA is touched

[MarcoE]

I recently bought cheap long range nRF24L01+PA+LNA radios from Aliexpress. I had good success with the other radios I bought but went with a different supplier this time. The units I bought are the YJ-15008+PA units from Keyes (as printed on the PCB).

But then when I tried to use the radios I realized there is something wrong. One peculiar thing was that when you touch the radio's PA it works. After some debugging and reading other forums I found that the CE pin on the radio header is not connected to the nRF24L01 chip. I had to do a wire mod to connect these and the problem disappeared. I guess when touching the radio while the software is waiting for the MAX_RT or TX_DS bits to be asserted during a transmission, you "trigger" the TX enable on the PA chip and the transmission happens.

I have seen quite a few threads in different forums regarding the fake cheap Chinese radios with the same behavior (touching starts the transmission etc.) so I am posting this just in case someone using MySensors is struggling. The usual answer people give is related to filtering the power and eliminating noise etc. I believe these are valid arguments for increasing range but if the software hangs (using a simple RF24 GettingStarted example for instance) this is most probably your problem! Hope this helps someone!

[Mark Swift]

Interesting post, do you have a link to instructions?

[MarcoE]

@Mark-Swift Hi Mark,l. No sorry, no link with instructions but should you have these units or the same problem, send me an email address and I can mail you the pictures I took and explain what I did.

[Mark Swift]

@MarcoE I think I do have units with the issue, my hope was you could share it here for all to see, it might help solve a number of issues for the community...