nRF24L01 reset?

RE: nRF24L01 reset?

user116667 — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 13:31:29 GMT

I had the same issue and found a simple hack : I drive nRF24L01 off of an MCU (any) logic pin, using an LED to drop the voltage to about 3.4-3.5V ensuring that I set the pin to OUTPUT and state HIGH in setup. I tested a few (RED) LEDs in series with 100 ohm resistor and found one that had a forward voltage (Vf) of 1.5-1.6 V, so a drop of 5 - 1.5 Volts, giving a healthy 3.5V supply to nRF24L01. When MCU or software re-sets the power drops and does "hard reset" on the nRF24L01.

Tested on Arduino - RPi GPIO is 3.3V so no diode needed, and should be well within the 50mA max

Typical Vf - current chart below - I chose s RED LED that started at 1.5 and went to 1.65 @50 mA

RE: nRF24L01 reset?

user2111 — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 15:25:41 GMT

If you have several PTX and PRX I would think you were able to narrow down if it is the PTX or PRX that stop working?

If it's the PRX I would strongly recommend that you call flush RX in case you have received a malformed packet. Typically also flipping the power bit (down and up) may cause the chip to change internal state, but I am not aware of any issue. Is it possible that there is some sort of ESD event that have occurred here?

Kenneth

RE: nRF24L01 reset?

user25439 — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 14:32:17 GMT

You can test it quickly by raplacing the chip. How did you solder the chip ? Overheating might cause damage. Can you log your uc temperature and see if any relations between glitch and temp changes.

RE: nRF24L01 reset?

user86723 — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 13:53:06 GMT

Sorry being late to come back.

First I must emphasise that my problem occurs only very seldom, I have seen it perhaps five times. Today my system has been running continuously without a glitch for more than a week messaging every minute.

What happens is that the PRX suddenly doesn't get any messages at all. Rebooting the uc doesn't help, power must be removed from the NRF 240 PTX and restored to resume messaging.

I haven't been able to see the phenomenon in my uc's debugger but with an oscilloscope I have seen that data comes out of the NRF 240 MISO-pin in what seems to be the normal manner. I have tried to provoke the problem by turning off and on the PRX, sending malformed ack messages etc. but without success.

My program does restore all registers anew before every message.

Could it be a defective chip?

RE: nRF24L01 reset?

user2111 — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 13:44:53 GMT

Hi,

Make sure you are handling the IRQ sources, such as for instance MAX_RT. Clear the flags and potentially flush rx and tx fifos.

Kenneth

RE: nRF24L01 reset?

user25439 — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 02:44:09 GMT

need to see the software but most common cause of this is an overflow. Check for it. You might be overflowing something and its causing the shutdown.