RFCat N32 Claims a 30-Fold Transmission Power Boost for Low-Cost, Feather Format Bluetooth Projects
Using a high-power low-noise amplifier, the RFCat N32 is designed for long-range Bluetooth work — and is Arduino-compatible.
Anyone looking to work with Bluetooth at longer-than-usual ranges should check out the RFCat N32, a new Arduino-compatible development board from RFCat with a claimed 30-fold boost in transmission power.
"Based on the nRF52832 microcontroller, featuring a power amplifier and LNA giving the development board a transmission power of 18.9dBm, and receiver sensitivity of -96dBm," RFCat writes of the design. "This board has 30X the transmission power of a regular nRF52832, resulting in a longer range, and higher bandwidth over longer distances."
"The board is fully compatible with Arduino and comes pre-loaded with the Adafruit nRF52 bootloader. Programming the board can be done trough the USB type C connector directly from Arduino IDE, or through the SWD pins using J-Link or similar programmer. The board also supports programming Over The Air, without any coding required — just press three buttons on the board."
Having developed the board after failing to find any existing off-the-shelf kits which use the same high-power Skyworks RFX2401C module, RFCat developed the RFCat N32 — and did so in a Feather form factor, including compatibility with the Feather Arduino libraries.
The design includes 21 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, seven analog-to-digital converter (ADC) pins, three buttons, and two on-board LEDs. Power and data are given using a USB Type-C connector, through a CP2102N USB to UART bridge.
The board is now on Tindie, priced at $29 without 2.54mm header pins; more information is available from the board's data sheet.