[Shred]

From reading other threads, I gather that the receiver board only needs 9v for the 433MHz transmitter. Ideally, I'd like to power the board solely from USB but I want to have my cake and eat it - and still get good range from the radio transmitter.

Has anyone tried using an LM2577 boost regulator to generate +9v from the 5v output on the Arduino board? There are complete boost regulator boards based on this chip available from Chinese vendors for ridiculously low prices - less than 1/5th the price of the chip alone from my local electronics shop.

[werk_ag]

Let's say that it can be done, but...

If you look to the RX v4.03 board, near the red jumper cap, you will find two more holes. Those four pins (the two holes plus the two that have the jumper) are there to allow a connection for feeding a step up converter which will provide de 9V for the transmitter, just from the Arduino 5V. This option was created to do exactly what you want to do, but there are some caveats... and risks

If you intend to use the hardware data logger I strongly suggest that you don't use this solution, mainly for this reason: If you ever need to shutdown the computer, your RX unit will loose the USB power supply, and the hardware data logger will stop recording your valuable weather data, during all the time that your PC is turned off.

That "mystery" connector, was first introduced in the V4.02 boards design for a special purpose, but that was before we have implemented the data logger functionality.

[Shred]

Thanks for that explanation, Werk_AG. It sounds like you are one step ahead of me there!