Adafruit RFM69HCW 868/915MHz RF Module Products

Description

The Adafruit 3070 RFM69HCW 868/915MHz Transceiver Radio module is a breakout board for the RFM69HCW. This board breaks out the 2.0mm pin spacing RFM69HCW to 2.54mm (0.1in) breadboard spacing, includes an LDOLow Dropout Regulator Linear Regulator that allows an operating with a wider supply voltage between 3.3V to 6V DC, and a 74HC4050D data level shifter ICIntegrated Circuit to communicate with 3.3V or 5V devices.

This board also features a PCBPrinted Circuit Board spot with the option to solder on a uFL or SMASubMiniature version A (SMA) connector antenna connector or a simple wire antenna. The range of these modules can go up to 500 meters line-of-sight using simple wire antennas, where higher ranges can be achieved by using a better antenna or by lowering the data bit rate.

The RFM69HCW modules have a continuous transmit mode or packet mode that has the benefit of error correction and can also auto-retransmit. There are many RFM69 Arduino libraries available, such as as the LowPowerLab's RFM69 Library and AirSpayce's Radiohead Library which also supports many other radios.

Although the Adafruit board includes the 915MHz RFM69HCW version, it can also be used at 868MHz when changing the software configuration to this frequency. There is only minor passive component differences between the two versions of the 868MHz and 915MHz RFM69HCW and open air testing reveals no significant signal strength difference using the 915MHz RFM69HCW with 868MHz settings.

Specs

Adafruit RFM69HCW 868/915MHz Module Specs
Parameter	Description
Module	Adafruit RFM69HCW 868/915MHz Breakout Module (PID 3070)
RFM69	RFM69HCW 915MHz (Datasheet PDF)
Transceiver IC	Semtech SX1231 (Datasheet PDF)
Frequency	868/915MHz (862MHz min, 1020MHz max) ISMIndustrial, Scientific, and Medical radio bands band
Modulation	FSKFrequency-Shift Keying modulation, GFSKGaussian Frequency-Shift Keying modulation, MSKMinimum-Shift Keying modulation, GMSKGaussian Minimum-Shift Keying modulation, and OOKOn-Off Keying modulation
Air Data Rate (bpsbits per second)	Configurable with FSKFrequency-Shift Keying modulation Bit rates up to 300kbps
Receiving Sensitivity (dBmDecibel-milliwatts (dBm) is a power level that expresses decibels in terms of milliwatts on a logarithmic scale.)	Down to -120dBm at 1.2kbps
Transmitting Power (dBmDecibel-milliwatts (dBm) is a power level that expresses decibels in terms of milliwatts on a logarithmic scale.)	Up to +20dBm (100mW) Power Output Capability Programmable with 1dB steps between -18dBm min and +20dBm max
I/O Data Interface	SPISerial Peripheral Interface (SCKSerial Clock line, MISOMaster In Slave Out (MISO) is the SPI data output line from the slave device, MOSIMaster Out Slave In (MOSI) is the SPI data output line from the master device, CSChip Select (CS) is the SPI output line from the master device to indicate that data is being sent. Also referred to as CSN or Slave Select (SS).) (3.3V or 5V tolerant) RST Reset (3.3V or 5V tolerant) G0 IRQ interrupt (3.3V or 5V tolerant) GPIO G1 - G5 (3.3V logic)
Data Level Shifter IC	TI 74HC4050D (Datasheet PDF)
Data Packets	Preamble, Sync word, Address and Message (payload) and optional CRCCyclic Redundancy Check Payload with AESAdvanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001. It was developed an alternative to the Data Encryption Standard (DES), which was starting to become vulnerable to brute-force attacks.-128 encryption and length up to 255 bytes Optional 2-bytes CRCCyclic Redundancy Check checksum
Operating Supply Voltage	3.3V to 6V DC
Supply Voltage Regulator IC	AP2112k-3.3 LDOLow Dropout Regulator Linear Regulator (Datasheet PDF) Output 3.3V 600mA (min) Input 2.5V to 6.0V max Package SOT-25
Transmission Current	50mA (+13dBm) to 150mA (+20dBm)
Receiving Current	30mA
Networking	Supports multipoint networks with individual node addresses. Up to 256 networks Up to 255 nodes per network
Size	25.3mm x 29.3mm x 3.5mm (1.0in x 1.15in x 0.14in)