RFLink ESP

This is an Radio Frequency to MQTT/Serial/TCP gateway built for an ESP32 and eventually ESP8266 board (see #MCU for more).

It receives and decodes OOK 433MHz signals from your sensors, alarms push them over MQTT/TCP/Serial. For some devices it can also send commands to control them.

Project is forked RFLink-ESP (for ESP8266), itself forked from original RFlink project "Release 29" for Arduino only board.

This fork is providing additional features from the others:

Fully (almost) configurable from a web interface, although CLI is still and will remain available.
No more recompilation for most options which are configurable at runtime and saved in Flash.
Far more advanced debugs and troubleshooting helpers.
Restructured source code with namespaces and classes (Work in Progress)

1. MCU

We use extensively ESP32 dev kits.

This is default settings in Platformio.ini and RFLink.h files.

You may use:

Other ESP8266/ESP8255 based boards, when no pins limitations. NodeMCUv2 is known working.

2. Receiver / Transmitter / Transceiver

As a starting point, you can use the RXB6 receiver. It is simple, steady, running on 3.3v, easy to find and cheap.

Many other receivers will do! Simply *** Please avoid generic noname receiver ***

For more advanced behavior and reliability, the following receivers are also supported when used with an ESP32 board:

SX1278
SX1276
RFM69CW
RFM69HCW
CC1101

Those advanced receivers require a few pins to be connected to the host, here are the recommended pin assignments:

Name	ESP32	SX1278/6	RFM69(H)CW	CC1101
	3v3	VCC	3.3V	VCC
	GND	GND	GND	GND
	18	SCK	SCK	SCK
	19	MISO	MISO	MISO
	23	MOSI	MOSI	MOSI
pins::RX_RESET	4¹	NRESET	RESET
pins::RX_CS	5¹	NSS	NSS	CSN
pins::RX_DATA pins::TX_DATA	26¹	DIO2	DIO2	GDO0

¹ These must be configured in the web portal, values suggested here are proven to work reliably.

3. OLED display

You can use an OLED display! We used SSD1306 128x64 I2C screen for our testings.

*** This is highly experimental ***, and thus not activated by default.

4. IDE

We strongly recommend using PlatformIO IDE (https://platformio.org/install)
You may alternatively use Arduino IDE 1.8.10 (https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage)

5. Framework

We use Arduino Core for ESP8266 https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino

6. Libraries

So far, in addition of core libraries, we use:

PubSubClient for MQTT messaging https://github.com/knolleary/pubsubclient
u8g2/u8x8 library for OLED display https://github.com/olikraus/u8g2

7. COMPILE OPTIONS AND FLAGS

Many features are not enabled by default or can be disabled for various reasons : firmware size, compability etc etc. Here is a listing with some instructions:

OTA (disabled by default)

There are 3 types of OTA tp update your firwware

Arduino/ESP's classic push over UDP (disabled by default)

RFLINK_OTA_ENABLED we recommaend that you enable a password for this method or anyone on your network could push a new firmware
RFLINK_OTA_PASSWORD="my_password_here" or RFLINK_OTA_PASSWORD='"'${sysenv.OTA_SEC}'"' in platforomio.ini with an environement variable called OTA_SEC

AutoOTA

Your device will download new firmware from a specific URL you specify.

RFLINK_AUTOOTA_ENABLED
AutoOTA_URL in Credentials.h or in platformio.ini

Config Portal Web Upload

Via WifiManager's Config Portal you can upload a new firmware insert screenshot here

8. Additional info

Default login and password of WebUI

rflink32 / 433mhz

Pinout

When WebServer is active (which is default), pin setup has to be done there.
For safety & simplicity, default WebServer setup is : all pin inactive.
You may add decoupling capacitors and antenna to improve results.
This is a simple RX pin wiring :

Name	D1 mini	RXB6
PIN_RF_TX_VCC	D5	5 VCC
PIN_RF_TX_NA	D6	6 DER
PIN_RF_TX_DATA	D7	7 DAT
PIN_RF_TX_GND	D8	8 GND

Alternative Pinout

ESP8266 can't draw more than 12mA on a GPIO pin.
Some receivers have current spikes bigger than that (eg RXB12).
This lead to a non working receiver / non starting ESP.
Here is a more safe wiring

Name (Alt)	D1 mini	RXB6
PIN_RF_TX_VCC	3v3	5 VCC
PIN_RF_TX_NA	N/A	6 DER
PIN_RF_TX_DATA	D7	7 DAT
PIN_RF_TX_GND	GND	8 GND

Thanks

Special thanks to: Axellum, Etimou, Schmurtz, Zoomx

obones / RFLink32