RFM69HCW Breakout Board

The RFM69HCW is an inexpensive and versatile radio module that operates in the unlicensed ISM (Industry, Science, and Medicine) radio band. It's perfect for building inexpensive short-range wireless networks of sensors and actuators for home automation, citizen science, and more.

Specs

• Transmit power: -18dBm (0.016mW) to +20dBm (100mW) in 1dBm steps
• Receive sensitivity: down to -120dBm at 1.2kbps
• Modulation types: FSK GFSK MSK GMSK OOK
• Bit rates (FSK): 1.2kbps to 300kbps
• Voltage range: 1.8V to 3.6V
• Current consumption: 0.1uA sleep, 1.25mA standby, 16mA receive,
• 130mA transmit (max)
• Encryption: AES 128-bit (optional)
• Packet buffer (FIFO): 66 bytes
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 1.1"

Product Versions

The RFM69HCW modules transmit in the ISM band, which is reserved for short-range, low-power communications. SparkFun sells the RFM69HCW Breakout Board in two frequencies:

• RFM69HCW Breakout 915MHz (WRL-12775)
• RFM69HCW Breakout 433MHz (WRL-12823)

Broadly speaking, the 915MHz version is legal in ITU region 2 (North and South America, Australia, Greenland, Pacific Islands, Israel), and the 433MHz version is legal in ITU region 1 (Europe, Africa, Middle East, Russia). Other areas have mixed allocations; hobbyist use is not likely to be an issue, but if you're going to be deploying a lot of these or using them in a commercial product, check your local regulations.

Documentation

• Hookup Guide
• RFM69HCW Breakout Board Schematic
• RFM69HCW datasheet
• HopeRF RFM69HCW product page (external link)

Repository Contents

• /Libraries/Arduino - Contains the RFM69 library written by Felix Rusu of LowPowerLab.com. See https://github.com/LowPowerLab/RFM69 for the most up-to-date version.

• /Libraries/Arduino/RFM69/examples - Example Arduino sketch showing how to use the SparkFun RFM69HCW breakout board. See the hook-up guide at https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/rfm69hcw-hookup-guide for wiring and usage details.

• /hardware - Eagle design files (.brd, .sch)

• /documentation - Datasheets, schematic, etc.

Attribution

We gratefully acknowledge Felix Rusu of LowPowerLab.com for his terrific RFM69 library, which runs on his very cool Moteino hardware. A version of his library is included here for the convenience of SparkFun customers. Please see his GitHub repository for the latest version.

License Information

The hardware design is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Felix Rusu's RFM69 library is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

SparkFun's example code is based on Felix Rusu's work, and is thus released under the same Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.