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

We mainly use 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 ***

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