@mfalkvidd yes, thank you and everyone - I am all fixed and working now.
I am giving 3.3v to the radio with a separate voltage regulator.

Thank you @gohan !

In the end - it was wiring!

I first swapped out the NRF24L01 for another one - no good.

I then realized I wired the NRF24L01 to the Nano as if the Nano was a Micro Pro (as in the Micro Pro diagram - did I mention newbie?)

I fixed that but it still didn't work but...

I probably burned out the first 2 NRF24L01 boards because I then replaced with another brand new board on the new wiring and all is good,.

I think swapping NRF while still bad wiring just burned out additional boards.

I get it now - thank you.,

I didn't know what the output meant (except perhaps "FAIL").

Thx, i will try rewiring .

Ideas please?

I'm brand new so this could be obvious or I may have missed config steps or anything.
I've built:

• ESP8266/NodeMCU+NRF24L01 Gateway
• Nano+NRF24L01 Sensor

I can run blink on both. I can connect gateway to my LAN network but I can't get sensor node to to be seen by gateway over NRF24L01 radios.

I am looking for any simple code I can load on Gateway and Sensor to prove out/troubleshoot communications.

My gateway boots and connects to LAN but never shows any signs of NRF24L01 comms.

My Sensor is currently running MockSensor Example. The output is just the following over and over:

16 MCO:BGN:INIT NODE,CP=RNNNA---,VER=2.2.0
25 TSM:INIT
26 TSF:WUR:MS=0
33 !TSM:INIT:TSP FAIL
35 TSM:FAIL:CNT=1
36 TSM:FAIL:DIS
38 TSF:TDI:TSL
10040 TSM:FAIL:RE-INIT
10042 TSM:INIT
10048 !TSM:INIT:TSP FAIL
10051 TSM:FAIL:CNT=2
10052 TSM:FAIL:DIS
10054 TSF:TDI:TSL

Do I need to edit Config somewhere (the MockSensor has a device ID entry built in of 254 so I haven't done anything to that sketch.

Ideas, please.

Long term I will send the data (dallas temperature) over HTTP to Node-RED but don't trouble yourself with any of that - right now I JUST need to get NRF24L01 comms working - even with fake data.