Using a Superheterodyne vs Super-regenerative

Recall my past few posts and I been mentioning the use a of a 433mhz receiver.

On this picture the three on the left are Superheterodyne and the one on the right is a Super-regenerative

The superhet is supposed to be better then the regen ones.  The regen ones are cheaper but initially they worked with my setup.

Here is a recap

Apparently I flipped the mosfet in the picture, but it works when correctly oriented.

The mosfet is there to bring down the voltage from 5V to an ESP8266 safe 3.3V

It works with the regen but not the superhet versions.  But I figured it out, I think the mosfet inverts the signal, so it works with the regen but not the superhet.

Luckily the superhet work with 3.3V vcc, I don’t think it boosts the signal to 5V but it seems to work when I pull the mosfet and send the signal directly to the pin.

I need to do more research if this is safe, but it seems to work.

 

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6 Responses to Using a Superheterodyne vs Super-regenerative

  1. Aldo says:

    Hi! What library are you using? I have a tx and a rx (I’m starting with the cheap ones SAW/super-reg but I have also a tx/rx Quartz/Superhet) and tried with RadioHead / RH_ASK but nothing seems to work.
    I have wifi on the ESP (a ESP-12F) turned on because I am doing a thing that uses a web interface (at least for the setup – and for my tests it is also handy)…

    • larry says:

      I use MQTT not websockets or http to communicate.

      I am currently using Arduino 1.8.5, rc-switch 2.6.2, and MQTT by Joel Gaehwiler 2.3.1 and ESP8266 2.4.1

      Hope that helps.

      • Aldo says:

        Thank you. I’ve tried the rc-switch and… it works!! (now tried only with the super-regenerative but I assume that if it works with it, it will work also with the superior one with the quartz).
        It’s a pity that this way I can only transmit 24bit, with the RadioHead library I could send a short char string (only theorically! well I’ve read that somewhat disabling the wifi could help – not tried still).
        Well for this time I have just to send a temperature, but I always like to have some tool ready for more wide usage 🙂
        And I understand that the rc-switch can already command some switches but in my case this is a “defect” rather than a plus 🙂

        While I am here, do you have a idea on what protocol is more efficient (more distance); or at least “less used” (so I don’t risk to activate a switch while transmitting the temperature 🙂 ). I’m googling but not so much luck at present…

  2. larry says:

    Sorry for the late response, this server is not routing email properly.

    Have you looked in to LoRa?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa

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