Introduction

Moteino began as a low power wireless Arduino compatible development platform based on the popular ATmega328p chip used in the Arduino-UNO. There are now several Moteino development boards including MoteinoMEGA based on the Atmega1284P and MoteinoM0 based on the SAMD21G18 Cortex M0+.

For programming you will need an external FTDI-Adapter to load sketches, the advantages being lower cost, smaller size. The MoteinoUSB and MoteinoMEGA-USB variant includes the USB-serial converter.

Moteinos are compatible and can communicate with any other Arduino or development platform that uses the popular HopeRF RFM69 or LoRa transceivers, or even the older RFM12B. Moteino also comes with an optional SPI flash memory chip for wireless programming, or data logging.

Video introduction to Moteino R3 and the RFM69 transceivers and library:

What about MoteinoUSB?

Moteino-USB includes the USB-serial FTDI chip. Technically a MoteinoUSB is the combination of an FTDI-Adapter and a regular Moteino. It can be programmed and powered via the USB connector but can also run from a battery (VIN pin) just as well:

What about MoteinoMEGA?

The MoteinoMEGA uses the Atmega1284p microcontroller. It still runs at 3.3V/16Mhz but has 128KB of internal flash (vs 32KB on Atmega328p), 16KB of RAM (vs 2KB), 4KB EEPROM (vs 1KB), 2x hardware serial ports, 8x PWM pins and bunch more GPIO pins. Still a small board at just 1.0×2.0″ and breadboard friendly. Comes with the same DualOptiboot bootloader making it “OTA” wireless programming capable, and can take up to 16V of input on the VIN pins (MCP1703 regulated).

To upload sketches to MoteinoMEGA you will need to first install the Moteino Core (instructions here). This defines the pin map and other important core definitions that allow the MEGA to be programmed from the Arduino IDE. Once that is done you should have a new board target under Tools>Boards called MoteinoMEGA


Moteino with trace antenna (868-915Mhz)

There are also two special Moteino variants with integrated PCB trace antennas, these are available for Moteino and MoteinoMEGA. The PCB antennas are tuned for the 868-915mhz bands and have an excellent performance given their compact size. Other than the PCB antenna, they are identical and work the same as regular Moteinos.