TinyAPRS for Power Node Mesh Network

I have done some experiments with the small 433 Mhz RX and  TX modules with the Arduino using the VirtualWire library and I am impressed. With just a short piece of wire as an antenna I could get coverage all over the house. These wireless modules may be suitable for the Power Node I am working on to communicate.

Above is the RX connected to a UNO Arduino with LCD displaying the packet count.

I using my Teensy 2.0 that was setup for 3 volts and the TX module still had plenty of range.



The protocol I am considering would be similar to APRS but simplified since the VirtualWire library only supports a maximum packets size of 27 bytes. This TinyAPRS would only use single byte node addresses thus only supporting a maximum of 254 nodes and would not contain call signs for node addresses like APRS but would use many of the other methods. Below are some of my ideas so far...