nrf24l01 not Working with Raspberry Pi Pico W

Question

I can use the nrf24l01 wireless module just fine with a Raspberry Pi Pico, but when I try to compile the same code on the Raspberry Pi Pico W, it fails to recognize the device. I am using this library, and I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 31, in <module>
File "nrf24l01.py", line 78, in __init__
OSError: nRF24L01+ Hardware not responding

The boards are supposed to have the same footprint, so what is the difference here? How can I use these modules with the Pico W?

Answer 1

How I got passed that error, is by defining the pins myself. Something like this:

spi_sck=machine.Pin(6) #or whichever pin you're using for sck
spi_mosi=machine.Pin(7) #or whichever pin you're using for mosi
spi_miso=machine.Pin(4) #or whichever pin you're using for miso
machine.SPI(0,baudrate=4000000,sck=spi_sck, mosi=spi_mosi, miso=spi_miso)

If you do that though, you'll need to change these lines:

csn = Pin(cfg["csn"], mode=Pin.OUT, value=1)
ce = Pin(cfg["ce"], mode=Pin.OUT, value=0)
spi = cfg["spi"]
nrf = NRF24L01(spi, csn, ce, payload_size=8)

to something like this:

csn = Pin(14, mode=Pin.OUT, value=1) #or whichever pin you're using for csn
ce = Pin(17, mode=Pin.OUT, value=0) #or whichever pin you're using for ce
nrf = NRF24L01(SPI(0), csn, ce, payload_size=8)

Answer 2

I fixed it by getting a new nrf24l01 module from SparkFun. Don't use the cheap ones off amazon.