The two main approaches for connecting an Arduino to an Ethernet network are the “normal” Ethernet shield or a module based on the ENC28J60 chip. While the Ethernet shield is easier to start with, it is comparatively expensive and also of little use for the smaller Arduino models (e.g. Arduino Nano or Pro Mini).

In contrast the ENC28J60 modules are cheap, small, and universally connectable. This comes, however, with the small downside that they are not supported by the Arduino IDE out-of-the-box. Of course, there is a myriad of web pages out there that deal with it in one aspect or another. There are two reasons why I add yet another:

• My ENC28J60 module (bought from AliExpress) is slightly different from the one usually seen. It does not need 3.3 volts but 5 volts, so the product description is wrong in that respect. Also, unlike all the other modules I have seen, it does not come with 10 but 12 connections.

  

• The usual recommendation for the library is EtherCard, but this did not work for me.

What finally worked for me was using the UIPEthernet library, which can also replace the standard Arduino Ethernet library. I connected the ENC28J60 module with a recently purchased Arduino Nano v3 clone using the following connections
[table colwidth=”50|50|50″ ]
Arduino Nano,, ENC28J60
SS, (Pin 10), CS
MOSI, (Pin 11), SI
MISO, (Pin 12), SO
SCK, (Pin 13), SCK
5V, , 5V
GND,, GND
[/table]
The Arduino Nano pin layout can be found here. The ENC28J60 module module offers a few more connections, as can be seen on the photo below. However, I used only the “usual suspects”.

The next step is to put this thing to use. I am currently planning some kind of data logger for 433 MHz signals, that are typically used for entry-level remote control purposes.