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, and Australia for a brief list. Please fill us in if your country uses the 915 Mhz ISM band. See the Jee Labs shop for 868 MHz radios.

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 v3 – including an ATmega328p processor and an RFM12B radio module. The processor chip is pre-flashed with the Arduino boot loader and the RF12demo sketch. 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 radios. JeeNodes may be programmed either with our USB-BUB programmer, or an FTDI RS232R 5V cable.

The PCB only variant is the bare v3 board without any components. You’ll need to add your own ATmega, RFM12B, regulator, pin headers, and a few other components to create a working JeeNode.

If you need the 868MHz radios, checkout Jee Labs

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 MD USB-BUB or FTDI cable

Resources

• The Jee Gospel at JeeLabs.org