Hello all,
I am quite new to this form. I really like the idea of using small nrf24l01+arduino nodes around the home to control electronics.
I have successfully hand built few nodes (2 based on Arduino Nano and 1 based on Arduino Pro Mini) and deployed around the home.
Here are some of the pictures of my nodes
It takes lot of time to hand build these nodes. So I decided to make a small generic PCB uing Arduino Pro Mini and fabricate it and use it. I designed the PCB in Eagle SW and fabricated with Seedstudios.
Here is my board looks like
After mounting the components, I found it is not working. Tx/Rx was completely failure. After several hours of debugging, found that my circult is correct and I assume there were some EMC effects.
If I touch the antenna of nrf with my finger, Tx/Rx is successful and everything works perfect. If I remove my finger it does not work again.
I thought because of placement of nrf module there were some EMC effects and created a V2 of my board by just changing position of nrf. It looks like this
Unfortunately, even this board/design has the same problem.
These are how the boards look like
I also tried changing the position of nrf module by placing it in proto area and rewiring from the actual position, seems to have same problem.
On both of these board when I lift the nrf module at higher level than the Arduino Pro by stacking additional female headers for nrf (as shown in below picture), they seem to be working.
Could some please help me understand whats happening on my board. :-( I want to go for V3 of board which solves these problem but I could not figure out what exactly is causing the problem.
Thank you so much for your support.
Unfortunately, I do not have privilege to upload board and schematic files, so I adding screenshots here.
