@rpx said in nRF24Doctor:

I am curious to see your PCB.

Here you are :

https://github.com/TechNovation01/nRF24Doctor/blob/master/pcb/nRFDoctor_1.1_sch.pdf

It has some shortcomings for the power part, but the mosfets are ok.

@kduino Could you give this a try? Add the following to your sketch:

//...
#define SD_SS_PIN                     (4)  // chip-select for SD card (unused, pull high!) 
//...

void before() {
    pinMode(SD_SS_PIN, OUTPUT);
    digitalWrite(SD_SS_PIN, HIGH); 
}

@mathea90 I've used it for over 2 years now on my ethernet gateway and it never failed me.

I can only imagine that it stops receiving because the stack missed some interrupts from the radio, causing the internal radio queue to be filled. When this queue is totally filled any new incoming messages will be dropped by the radio.
I don't know why the stack would miss interrupts from the radio though; I assume cabling (especially the interrupt line) is solid. I don't think size of the buffer matters, unless you use slow hardware at a very high message rate.

What arduino are you using for the nodes?
Are you sending at a very high rate?
Could you post node logs and try with serial debug output disabled?

@alowhum said in A small NRF24L01 chip comparison:

My assumptions are:

• More data in a line means there is more range: it picks up more signals.

More data in a line means this channel has higher occupation; other devices are using the same channel and you'd better choose an empty channel for your nRF network (like 85 and up).

What I take from this is:

• The version with shielding has surprisingly poor range.

Doesn't make much difference I would say; it has lower sensitivity in neighbouring channels though.

• The version with an antenna (not the PA version!) has a lot of range. But it's expensive.

Remember, this tests receive only, so no clue on transmit range.

• The eByte module has a lot of range for the price.

That I knew already

Other thoughts:

• The first two pick up a signal in channel 61

They all do

• The eByte picks up a strong signal in channel 62, later shifting to channel 61. It picks it up ridiculously strongly (a score of 9). Is it picking up its own signal perhaps?

No, it's receiving only. Maybe some frequency hopping node nearby (bluetooth -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qNWQxRKoss) ? Smartwatch?

• Oddly enough, the antenna version seems to think the same signal is on channel 64.

These are snaphots of on-air traffic that vary over time.
If traffic was really at channel 61 and it received at channel 64 that module would not be able to communicate with other modules at the same channel.

@neverdie https://github.com/avishorp/PopCom/releases/download/v1.0.0/PopComSetup.msi

@sghazagh how did you connect the radio?
An ESP8266 outputs some bootloader text at a nonstandard baud rate during startup (74880 iirr) which looks like nonsense characters in a terminal with a different baud rate; maybe that's what you're seeing.

@pihome according to the arduino nano schematic 5v is connected through a diode to vusb; you'll see the voltage drop.
Vin is meant as input for the nano's voltage regulator. You should only feed power to it, not sink from it.

@alowhum By the way, I finished an extension for the nRF24Doctor about a week ago to display the nRF24 received power spectrum:

Between channels 0 and 125 you see a little 'chart' which has a clear peak around the center. The little dot above the chart is an indicator which shows the selected channel (61), frequency (2.461GHz) and Wifi channel (11) at the bottom row.

The peak in the chart is caused by my Wifi at channel 11

@alowhum this method uses the received power detector function of nrf24 modules, which just scans a channel for some time. If in this time frame a 'strong' signal is detected it will count as one. It's not as fancy as RSSI for instance, and is influenced by antenna type, orientation and preamp.
I recently did some tests and can clearly detect eg wifi activity, strongly influenced by heavy wifi traffic. Try starting a speedtest on your mobile phone while running the scan
As the spectrum changes over time comparing in detail will be hard, but wifi channels will show up clearly if you scan long enough.

@ricorico94 store data in influxdb, graph it using grafana and optionally use node-red to simultaneously use domoticz with influxdb. Search this website, it has quite some discussions on these topics.