Connect Base Station to Raspberry Pi

The base station 26 pin header will fit onto any of the Raspberry Pi models (26 pin or 40 pin). The pictures below show how the base station fits on a 40 pin Raspberry Pi.

Important Note!
Make sure you fit the base station the right way around and and perfectly aligned with pins 1-26 of the Raspberry Pi. You could damage the base station if fitted incorrectly.

1. Power off the Raspberry Pi

2. Carefully align the header as shown in Figure 1 and push the base station all the way down onto the Raspberry Pi GPIO header. 

Figure - 1 Align Base station with Raspberry Pi Header

3. In order to remove the base station from the raspberry Pi power off the Raspberry Pi and then hold the Raspberry Pi firmly with one hand and gently wiggle the base station loose with your other hand. Wiggling it from side to side is easier than pulling it directly upwards.

The next few steps explain how to test the device

4. The base station receiver uses the Raspberry Pi serial port in order to communicate. Follow the instructions at this link to configure the Raspberry Pi serial port.

5. Now open up a Raspberry Pi terminal window

6. Create a directory where you want to store the RF configuration tool


sudo apt-get install python-serial
cd ~
mkdir rf_tools
cd rf_tools

7. Download the RF sensor configuration tool

sudo wget

8. Send HELLO command to the Base Station

pi@raspberrypi:~/rf_tools $ python 01 HELLO
sending     : a01HELLO
response is : a01HELLO----
pi@raspberrypi:~/rd_tools $

As shown above the tool sent the command a01HELLO and it received a response a01HELLO---. That means it is working.

If the tool was unable to communicate with the base station then you would see three failed attempts to send the HELLO command as shown here:

pi@raspberrypi:~/rf_tools $ python 01 HELLO
sending     : a01HELLO
sending     : a01HELLO
sending     : a01HELLO
pi@raspberrypi:~/rf_tools $

If you did no get the above response then retrace each of the above steps carefully.