has anyone used the Wireless RF APC220?

I was just curious if anyone's used this and can confirm that it runs with little effort. I really can't find any documentation(people using it in their projects) I'm wondering if maybe because it's "new"?

I was mainly looking for something that can be used as a remote control from the PC so this would be pretty good.

here's a copy n paste of the directions used:


On PC side.

On the USB-TTL converter, CP2102 chips is used. We can download driver from Silicon Laboratories, or here is the driver I used. Unzip and run the exe file, follow step by step processes to install the driver.

Plug in USB adapter to PC, Windows will recognize it automatically.

Now we can attach the APC220 module onto the USB adapter. Due to difference in number of pins, please make sure it is attached correctly as shown.

Download and run RF-ANET, it will detect the APC220 module with USB adapter on COM port. Click "Read R". If it show "read succeed!", that means it can be used for communication

On Arduino side.

Copy the following code and upload to arduino. Please note that serial communication is used in both code upload and APC220 communication, so we MUST unplug the APC220 during code upload

int val = 0;
int ledPin = 13;
void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode( ledPin, OUTPUT );
}

void loop()
{
  val = Serial.read();
  if (-1 != val) {
   if ('A' == val || 'a' == val) {
     Serial.println("Hello from Arduino!");
   }else if ('B' == val || 'b' == val) {
      digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
      delay(500);
      digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
    }
  }
}

For the same reason of serial communication used for APC220, we cannot connect Arduino to PC with USB even for power supply reason, so external power is needed for this test.

Effective distance for APC220 is 1000M, so we can put Arduino with APC200 module away with external power supplied

On PC side, APC220 is communicating with Windows on serial COM port, so we can use Arduino's software as serial platform. As we are not talking to Arduino on this software this time, change of serial port is needed. In "Tools" -> "Serial Ports", select the COM port used by the APC220(the one with USB adapter connected to PC). Then click "Serial Monitor", type "A" and send, signal will be sent from PC to Arduino through the APC220 modules.

When Arduino receive this "A" signal, it will return a "Hello from Arduino!" signal and it will be shown on the Serial Monitor. When "B" is typed, LED on pin 13 of Arduino will be lighted up for 0.5 second.


:sunglasses:

I bought these a while ago and got it to work once. It is true that the range is about 1000m, just as long as you have a decent power source for your circuit.

The only issue I have now is that they seem to not want to work anymore. I have gone over the instructions several times and even went to the flamingeda.com site, which is all in Chinese (thanks Google translate). What they are saying now is that they use an additional Serial converter called the SerialDongle.

This is what I understand the issue is but if anyone else has any ideas to help fix the issue, I am all ears.