JeeNodes are a collaboration between Modern Device and an insanely talented and energetic engineer, Jean-Claude Wippler. It’s not exactly a 50/50 collaboration though because he apparently needs no sleep, allowing for a 24 hour development cycle. See his impressive blog and webshop.

The first Jee Product is called the JeeNode. Jean-Claude was inspired partly by the RBBB, but he added two big ideas of his own.

The first idea was to couple a low-cost radio to the RBBB, enabling wireless communication. For many people who wish to just send a few bytes from a sensor to a receiver, the available wireless options, such as XBee, are expensive overkill. So we think this little board fills an useful niche. Radios are available in 433 MHz & 915 MHz in the US and 433 & 868 MHz in Europe, all unlicensed ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) bands. By agreement with my collaborator Jean-Claude however, I only stock 915 MHz radios and ship to countries that use the 915 MHz band. This includes countries in North and South America, Greenland, Israel, and Australia for a brief list. Please fill us in if your country uses the 915 Mhz ISM band. 

 We are now shipping JeeNode v6. For those of you interested in the differences between V5 and V6 the V6 kits shorted out the input diode, which is no longer included in the kit. All other changes were just tweaks to the silkscreen.

Jean-Claude’s other big idea was organizing the microcontroller pins into “ports”, for easy intergration with sensors and the like. Each JeeNode has 4 identical “ports” for attaching analog and digital I/O logic, I2C devices, and more. Jean-Claude has written a Ports library that makes it simple to interface to these ports.

The JeeNode Kit contains all the parts needed to build a JeeNode v6 – including an ATmega328p processor and an RFM12B radio module. The processor chip is pre-flashed with the Arduino boot loader and the RF12demo sketch, so it works to talk to another JeeNode right out of the box. Kits are shipped with the ISM-band 915 MHz radio module for orders within the Americas, Australia and Greenland. European customers should please see the Jee Labs Shop for 868 MHz JeeNodes and European prices, and a few things we don’t carry yet.

JeeNodes may be programmed either with our USB-BUB programmer, or an FTDI RS232R 5V cable.

Purchase Options

• JeeNodes with 434 and 915 radios are listed in the drop down menu.
• JeeNodes minus the radio. (NoRF option) is listed in the drop down menu.
• USB-BUB for programming JeeNodes is here.
• If you need the 868MHz radios for Europe, check out the Jee Labs Shop.

PCB Specifications

• PCB for the JeeNode
• 3.150"(80mm) x .830"(21mm)

Specifications

• 4 ports for A/D, I2C, Digital Output etc
• ISM-band 915 Mhz, or 433 MHz radio
• Atmega328 chip, and voltage regulator
• Shipped with Duemilanove bootloader and JeeNode demo
  sketch, ready to send bytes, out of the box.
• Programmed with the MD USB-BUB or equivalent, including the FTDI cable

Resources

• building a JeeNode
• changes in V5 from V4 JeeNode
• A guide to antennae design for the RF12 radio from Hope RF