Hi Everyone,
I am having a range issue out of the box with a Motino R4 that I received. I purchased three with RFM69HW @ 433mhz, and soldered the piece of wire into the ANT slot.
After programming with the struct_send and struct_receive example codes from github, they do work and communicate, however the range is around 30cm. Anything beyond 30cm and it loses connectivity.
According to what I ordered, it was supposed to be R3, but I received R4 (no big deal though). In case something got mixed up with the frequencies, I also tried setting the frequency to 868 and 915mhz, just to see if that helped improve the range. All frequencies work equally poorly. Is there any way to confirm the receiver I have is the one I ordered, 433mhz?
I have tested to ensure I don't have a short between the ANT and ground - multimeter shows this as an open circuit.
On the serial console of the receiver, when the antennae are within 5cm of one another I can see:
Listening at 433 Mhz...
SPI Flash Init OK!
[99] [RX_RSSI:-74] nodeId=99 uptime=16200 temp=91.23 - ACK sent. Pinging node 99 - ACK...ok!
[99] [RX_RSSI:-74] nodeId=99 uptime=16500 temp=91.23 - ACK sent.
[99] [RX_RSSI:-75] nodeId=99 uptime=16800 temp=91.23 - ACK sent.
[99] [RX_RSSI:-75] nodeId=99 uptime=17100 temp=91.23 - ACK sent. Pinging node 99 - ACK...ok!
[99] [RX_RSSI:-76] nodeId=99 uptime=17400 temp=91.23 - ACK sent.
[99] [RX_RSSI:-75] nodeId=99 uptime=17700 temp=91.23 - ACK sent.
If I move it to 30cm, the RX_RSSI increases to high 90s then drops:
[99] [RX_RSSI:-90] nodeId=99 uptime=103200 temp=91.23 - ACK sent.
[99] [RX_RSSI:-88] nodeId=99 uptime=103500 temp=91.23 - ACK sent. Pinging node 99 - ACK...ok!
[99] [RX_RSSI:-90] nodeId=99 uptime=103800 temp=91.23 - ACK sent.
[99] [RX_RSSI:-87] nodeId=99 uptime=104100 temp=91.23 - ACK sent.
[99] [RX_RSSI:-92] nodeId=99 uptime=104400 temp=91.23 - ACK sent. Pinging node 99 - ACK...nothing
What can I do to increase the range? My range requirement is not great, the project is a pair of suits for a costume that need to communicate with one another. The people wont be more than a few meters away from one another, with some potential objects between them.