Hi All,
I'm very basic at electronics and wireless.
What I'm trying to do is , get my battery/solar PV voltages and current monitored remotely from another location on my home.
I've chosen the Raspberry Pi to store/make the data available all over the home/internet with Ethernet connection.
NRF24L01+ module with printed antenna is used to communicate the Ardino and the Raspberry pi which acts as a hub.
I went with the NRF24 at first place because they are very cheap than lets say xbee , at just 2$ it was great and cheap to learn .
So far I've succeeded passing the data from Arduino back to raspberry Pi however it works only with small distance (4M-5M) passing 1 wall or so.
I need to be able to pass this data through almost 3-4 walls of concrete and with distance of roughly 10-12M or less.
There is 2 other vareity of the NRF24 circuits available. one with a only SMA antenna.. and another with PA/LNA and SMA
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NRF24L01-PA-LNA-SMA-Antenna-Wireless-Transceiver-communication-module-2-4G-1100m-/310673096920?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item48558f40d8costs about 12$
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Arduino-2-4G-NRF24L01-Wireless-Transceiver-Module-SMA-Antenna-Microcontroll-/200932672566?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ec8854436costs about 7$
I want to know if PA/LNA is worth the extra 5$ or would the SMA antenna alone do the job for my requirement?
Is bigger antenna version required at both the ends or would it suffice to have the HUB use the wireless chip with bigger antenna and leave the sensors with the basic NRF24L01+ without external antenna?
Let me know if this chip will do the job , or if i should consider other alternatives like xbee or RF12M