I bought a cheap USB stick to nrf24l01 adapter on aliexpress.

An alternative is to use a arduino nano or something with the https://github.com/TMRh20/RF24

Would be much more flexible too.

However the convenience of just being able to pop in the little man is nice.

They module plugs in pointing away from the usb port. Red and Blue LEDs turn on.

Documentation is very poor. But apparently takes AT commands

I found this on a french ebay site.

http://www.ebay.fr/itm/NRF24L01-USB-adapter-adaptateur-USB-2-4Ghz-pour-NRF24L01-UART-2-4G-NRF24L01-/272081225026

Seems to be accurate. The actual seller I got it from suggested AT+ADD to set address which does not work

AT Commands Baudrate : AT+BAUD=n where n =  1-6 (1:4800,2:9600,3:14400,4:19200,5:38400,6:115200) (default 9600Kbps) NRF Rate : AT+RATE=n where n =  1-3 (1:250K, 2:1M, 3:2M ) (default 2Mbps) Local Address : AT+RXA=0Xnn,0Xnn,0Xnn,0Xnn,0Xnn where nn are the local receiving address (default 0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff) Target Address  : AT+TXA=0Xnn,0Xnn,0Xnn,0Xnn,0Xnn where nn are the target address Operating Freq. : AT+FREQ=2.nnnG where nnn = 400 / 525 (default 2.400G) Checksum mode : AT+CRC=n where n = 8 /16 (default : 16 bit) System info : AT?

AT? gets

ϵͳ��Ϣ��
�����ʣ�9600
Ŀ��Է���ַ�� 0xFF,0xFF,0xFF,0xFF,0xFF
���ؽ��յ�ַ0��0xFF,0xFF,0xFF,0xFF,0xFF
����Ƶ�ʣ�2.400GHz
У�鷽ʽ��16λCRCУ��
���书�ʣ�0dBm
���д������ʣ�2Mbps
�������Ŵ����棺����

Probably that is Chinese. But we can get some guesses. What each of those means. The second address is RX, the first is TX. I checked by changing them with AT+RXA= commands

It has an STC chip on it STC11L04E. They’ve included source that does not accept AT commands, so is there a way to reprogram the chip? after looking at the datasheet seems plausible, but not worth the energy.

And the usb to serial chip is the ubiquitous CH340.

Put it on two computers. Or on the same comp.

In two windows type

screen /dev/cu.wchblah blah blah 9600

where the blah blah blah can be found using ls/dev and finding the full device name

Typing in just pipes it right over to the other man (9600baud). Pretty good.

Edit: Check out Pete’s post below for more info. Apparently there are version differences between boards