Hello, recently I got the uConsole Antenna Board accessory meant for the LoRA module, but I am just using it as an antenna board right now for wifi and 4g. So far I haven’t been able to get the 4g module to actually pick up a signal. I’ve tried all three of the antenna connections of the 4g module itself, but all of them result in poor, or usually 0% signal. I assume the connection labeled “main” is the one I want.
My 4g module is also still on the 9001 firmware. I’m a bit nervous about upgrading it because I’ve read that you can’t downgrade it later, but I’ve also read that the 9011 firmware is more consistent.
Small update on this, I brought the uConsole with me on an errand and during its time in the car, it actually picked up a signal. Now it works inside the house and I’m having registration issues, which I have some ideas to solve. I know that my house is not great for wireless signals, but it seems strange to me that it’s fine inside after having been outside, but can’t seem to get a signal inside from a fresh boot.
Yeah it’s not nearly as much of an issue with my phone anymore, but I’ve lived here at different times across about 23 years… it’s always been a little bit of a nightmare for cellular. I guess it just needs to get an initial strong connection and then it has an easier time maintaining that afterward.
I’m in France, out in the countryside. With a smartphone, I get around 2 to 3 Mb/s on 4G.
But with the uConsole and its stock antenna, I get no signal at all, and zero bandwidth.
I tried using an antenna from an old laptop (the internal screen antenna), and was able to recover the same signal and speed as the smartphone.
Then I took the time to buy the small antenna mounting kit from Hacker’s Gadget, and installed two 4G antennas I had salvaged from an unused 4G modem. And now? I’m getting around 15 Mb/s, 67% signal strength, and I can even make perfectly clear calls.
Sure, the antennas are a bit large, but the improvement is huge.
Bonus:
While I was setting everything up, I had a fiber outage. I managed to share the 4G connection and set up the CM4 as a hotspot, which allowed me to work for two full days until the fiber was restored.
In short: awesome!
At first, yes, I did tape the stock antenna as instructed. But due to poor speeds, I ended up adding a Wi-Fi antenna to the kit as well. I now get a reception rate of 480 Mbps, and in practice with iperf3 I reach around 115 Mbps — roughly 10 MB/s, which matches the CM4’s actual throughput.
