Difficulty Connecting RF 434 Transmitter & Reciever

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello, I am attempting to establish a connection between my new Rf 434 (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10534) transmitter and receiver. My connections are as follows (according to https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/RF/KLP_Walkthrough.pdf):
Transmitter: 2 >> Arduino DP1 (RXI)
Receiver: 2 >> Arduino DP0 (TXO)

I'm using the VirtualWire Library and Code on two Arduino Pro Minis (VirtualWire: Examples).

The DP13 LED on the Transmitter Arduino side flashes but the Reciever Arduino shows no signs of getting the signal.

When I removed the Serial commands from the code the receiver shows an endless string of "|<~<<>øøx|" in the serial monitor. The receiver serial monitor is interrupted every time I power up and down the transmitter, which to me shows they are working from a hardware perspective. Something is clearly going wrong on the software side and if you have any ideas I greatly appreciate them.

Thank you.

2

Don't use pins 0 and 1. If you are using code that works via interrupts, 0 and 1 do not equal 0 and 1.
Show your code.
Make the switch now to Radiohead instead of VirtualWire.

3

The Sparkfun KLP walkthrough example does not use VirtualWire. It sends data out through the serial port to TX (D1) and receives via the serial port RX (D0). This will work, but not very well.

If you follow the basic VirtualWire examples, use the recommended pin connections (not D1 and D0) and they will work fine.

At the very least, you should connect 17 cm straight wire antennas to the ANT pins on both the RX and TX modules.

4

Using RadioHead fixed my problem, thank you both very much.