Arduino Support for the PiicoDev Transceiver 915MHz

Is there Arduino Support for the PiicoDev Transceiver 915MHz or is any planned? I find the idea of using an interpreted language to drive hardware a bit strange. Languages like Python are great for front-end projects (like user interfaces … etc) but driving hardware requires runtime efficiency. I see that someone has created a GO code repo for some PiiDev products. Maybe a step in the right direction but then GO doesn’t seem to have a broad userbase - The Arduino does.

Joe P.

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Hey Joe,

From what I can find the chip used in the PiicoDev board is a RFM69HCW which seems to be a fairly common transceiver for this sort of thing.

The chip specifically has a bit of support for Arduino usage from what I could find. Maybe give this a look into and see if it would work for you and this board?

Hope this helps!

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Hi Samuel,
Tks for your reply. Yes indeed the RFM69HCW has Arduino libraries which do seem widely used and it may be the way I need to go - eg get a RFM69HCW 915MHz Transceiver Radio Module and controller and set these up as a Transceiver unit using the Arduino development environment. But Core Electronics has already done this - PiicoDev Transceiver 915MHz. My question really is: “Is Arduino support for the PiicoDev Transceiver 915MHz, in fact your PiicoDev eco-system as a whole, available or is planned”?

Joe P.

Hi @Joe53903 - good question!
We’re heavily invested in MicroPython and have no plans to port PiicoDev to Arduino.

Why? Most hardware is already available in the arduino ecosystem in one form or another. For example, our BME280 Atmospheric sensor is a very popular module, for which there already exist numerous drivers in Arduino. We haven’t seen a need to create a cohesive Arduino port because just about everything is supported by Arduino libraries :grimacing:

That said, there will be edge cases, like this one with the PiicoDev Transceiver - a totally new and custom design that relies on an intermediary microcontroller on the Transceiver board to translate between I2C and SPI. It does all the low level configuration directly with the RFM module, and receives relatively simple I2C commands from the host microcontroller.

That being said, the recipe to drive it is all there in the source code - it’s an open source driver and just begging to be ported :smiley:

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Thanks Michael\Samuel. Yes Arduino support for hardware is amazing - that’s why I’m transitioning from using the C\C++ toolset from Raspberry to the Arduino ecosystem. I’d rather not have to write the ‘low level’ drivers for every bit of hardware I need. Re. the PiicoDev Transceiver 915MHz unit Ill try to educate myself a bit further using your source code and see if I can use it rather than recreate another solution.

Joe P.

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A noble effort @Joe53903 !

Otherwise, there are plenty of RFM modules out there that you can use existing libraries for :slight_smile:
Best of luck with your project :smiley:

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