Antenna Mod Anyone?

[hashish]

So I am kickstarter backer, I'm assuming my warranty has long expired. So I went ahead and opened my unit. I have to commend Securifi for making an enclosure that is easy to open. All you do is remove the 4 rubber feet and remove the hidden screws. No tabs to deal with, just be careful not to damage the antenna that is adhered to the front face of the enclosure.

At the bottom of the PCB there are three U.FL connectors for the wifi antennas (5 antennas total with the Zigbee and Zwave antennas). I was thinking of picking up an antenna mod kit (3x RP-SMA antennas with the U.FL to RP-SMA cables). There is plenty of space in the enclosure to drill three holes and mount the external antennas.

Has anyone done this yet? If so would love to hear your thoughts on changes in performance. Thanks.

[fillibar]

I have not heard of anyone doing it. As always there is the disclaimer about keeping it within legal RF guidelines for your country (FCC in US is fairly rough if you start causing interference).

That being said, always interested to hear what people try and how it works out.

[meberlein]

Would definitely be curious to see how this goes so if you try it please post results and instructions. Besides dropping connections, which I hope can be fixed with firmware, I would also like to see an improvement in the range otherwise an upgrade may be in my future.

[k1m]

As far as FCC regulations go, if you have an amateur radio license you can use the larger antenna and tweak the radio transmit power and you are free to do so as 2.4gHz and 5gHz is part of amateur radio spectrum license.   

[jrwhitehead]

I'm not convinced you'd see much if any improvement. You are introducing signal loss by adding the RP-SMA connectors / cable and there doesn't appear to be anywhere to set the gain for the antenna..

Also I wouldn't worry about breaking any laws in your country as the maximum transmit power is set when you configure the locale (country) of the device iirc.

That being said, I'd be interested to see if there are any improvement. You'd really need to test before and after with some wifi survey software to get any sort of firm results...

[hashish]

Anyone know a good manufacturer of antennas and U.FL cables? I don't want to get a crappy set.

As for instructions, if you can use a screw driver you can take this thing apart, probably one of the easiests pieces of tech to disassemble i've seen in years. But I will post some pics when I get around to getting antennas.

As for signal loss, I don't know how bad some of the cheap cables/antennas are, but I'm looking to buy good ones. Can't be much worse than the planar ~ 1cm x 4cm internal antennas.

[hashish]

So I bought:
 - 3x RG178 U.fl IPX to RP-SMA Male Pigtail Cables
 - 3x 5dBi White Dual-band dipole paddle antennas

From  wifi_expert on ebay. I have the white Almond+ so it wasn't easy finding good quality antennas.  I opted for the paddle ones because they look cooler and has gold connector. I also opted for the higher gauge RG178 reduce any loss the cable may introduce.

As soon as I receive them, I am going to test them with my android phone and wifi analyzer app before drilling the actual holes in the enclosure. Obviously not the most scientific test protocol, but it will do for my purpose. If I do see an improvement, I will go ahead with a permanent installation.

[meberlein]

Price is right (especially for someone else's experiment). Can't wait to see the results so please do post them when you can.

[bkdg100]

yes definitely let us know the ou come , pics would be great . if you did a rf survey before and after that would be awesome to see.