FS1000A Wireless RF433 Transmit and Receive Module Pair

I like experimenting with wireless devices, as you can tell from the many posts about them here! 😎 I am trying out an FS1000A Wireless RF433 Transmit and Receive Module pair this time.

They use use the RF 433Mhz  frequency with ASK modulation. (You can also get these with the 315Mz frequency instead.)  I got mine from Elecrow.com.  They look like this:

FS1000A Wireless RF433 Transmit and Receive Module Pair

Here is a graphic on how they work together:

Basically you can use one Arduino to control the Transmitter and one Arduino to control the Receiver. An Arduino RF library comes in handy for that. In the past, you’d use the VirtualWire library for controlling these modules, now however, there is a better library called RadioHead which supersedes it. Download it from HERE. Once you install it from the Arduino IDE (Sketch -> Include Library -> Add .ZIP Library) there will be a number of examples to choose from. You can use the File -> Examples -> RadioHead -> Ask -> ask_receiver and ask_transmitter sketches.

I modified them a bit as shown below.

Here is the sketch for the Arduino Receiver:

#include <RH_ASK.h>
#include <SPI.h>

// Arduino                     Receiver
//  GND--------------------------GND
//  D11--------------------------Data
//  5V---------------------------VCC

RH_ASK driver(2000, 11, 12);

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  if (!driver.init()) Serial.println("init failed");
}

void loop() {
  uint8_t buf[RH_ASK_MAX_MESSAGE_LEN];
  uint8_t buflen = sizeof(buf);

  if (driver.recv(buf, &buflen)) {
    driver.printBuffer("Received:", buf, buflen);
  }
}

Here is the sketch for the Arduino Transmitter:

#include <RH_ASK.h>
#include <SPI.h> 

// Arduino                     Transmitter
//  GND--------------------------GND
//  D12--------------------------Data
//  5V---------------------------VCC

RH_ASK driver(2000, 11, 12);

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);   
  if (!driver.init()) Serial.println("init failed");
}

void loop() {
  const char *msg = "hello";
  driver.send((uint8_t *)msg, strlen(msg));
  driver.waitPacketSent();
  delay(200);
}

As you can tell from the comments in the code, they are very easy to hook up. Both use only three pins (VCC, GND and DATA). Here is the Fritzing Diagram showing how they are connected:

You can download the custom fritzing parts from here. If you want my fritzing diagram, download it from here.

Updated Note (6/21/2018): In the receiver code, the printBuffer function ‘dumps’ the buffer in HEX (probably for better diagnostics). Here is the code for the receiver, if you want a normal print of the received characters:

#include <RH_ASK.h>
#include <SPI.h>

// Arduino                     Receiver
//  GND--------------------------GND
//  D11--------------------------Data
//  5V---------------------------VCC

RH_ASK driver(2000, 11, 12);

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  if (!driver.init()) Serial.println("init failed");
}

void loop() {
  uint8_t buf[RH_ASK_MAX_MESSAGE_LEN];
  uint8_t buflen = sizeof(buf);
  uint8_t i;
  if (driver.recv(buf, &buflen)) {
//    driver.printBuffer("Received:", buf, buflen);
    Serial.print("Received:");
    for (i = 0; i < buflen; i++) Serial.print(buf[i]);
    Serial.println("");
  }
}