nRF C Click

How does it work?

nRF C Click is based on the nRF24L01P, a low-power, high-performance 2.4GHz ISM GFSK transceiver operating in the worldwide ISM frequency band from 2400MHz up to 2527MHz, from Nordic Semiconductors. The nRF24L01P is either a transmitter or receiver with an embedded baseband protocol engine, Enhanced ShockBurst™, over an SMD 2.4GHz chip antenna. The air data rate supported by nRF24L01P is configurable up to 2Mbps and is combined with two power-saving modes, making nRF C Click very suitable for ultra-low power designs. The embedded packet processing engines enable their entire operation with a simple MCU as a radio system. Auto packet handling, auto retransmission, and auto acknowledgment give reliable links without any MCU interference.

The nRF24L01P has a user-defined built-in state machine and four operational modes: Power Down, Standby (I and II), and RX/TX. A transmitter and a receiver must be programmed with the same RF channel frequency to communicate with each other supporting a programmable air data rate of up to 2Mbps. The radio front end uses GFSK modulation and has user-configurable parameters like frequency channel, output power, and air data rate. Internal voltage regulators ensure a high Power Supply Rejection Ratio (PSRR) and a wide power supply range, although nRF C Click is 3.3V only.

The nRF C Click uses an SPI serial interface to communicate with the host MCU. An interrupt pin INT acts as a maskable active-low state interrupt used to set autonomous modes where the internal state machine controls the events (each autonomous mode/sequence is ended with an interrupt). The first Standby mode is defined by the low logic state on the chip enable pin, routed to the RST pin of the mikroBUS™ socket, while the other modes are defined by configurable PWR_UP and PRIM_RX registers.

This Click board™ can be operated only with a 3.3V logic voltage level. The board must perform appropriate logic voltage level conversion before using MCUs with different logic levels. However, the Click board™ comes equipped with a library containing functions and an example code that can be used, as a reference, for further development.

Specifications

Pinout diagram

This table shows how the pinout on nRF C Click corresponds to the pinout on the mikroBUS™ socket (the latter shown in the two middle columns).

Notes	Pin					Pin	Notes
	NC	1	AN	PWM	16	NC
Chip Enable	CE	2	RST	INT	15	INT	Interrupt
SPI Chip Select	CS	3	CS	RX	14	NC
SPI Clock	SCK	4	SCK	TX	13	NC
SPI Data OUT	SDO	5	MISO	SCL	12	NC
SPI Data IN	SDI	6	MOSI	SDA	11	NC
Power Supply	3.3V	7	3.3V	5V	10	NC
Ground	GND	8	GND	GND	9	GND	Ground

Onboard settings and indicators

nRF C Click electrical specifications