Please don’t run the radios without an antenna attached. There’s a possibility of burning them out.
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Oddly enough, deleting the antenna-related part of the /boot/config.txt configuration improved my WiFi reception - before, the sensitivity was terrible even when I was less than a meter away, but after deleting the configuration, the sensitivity improved dramatically. (But it’s not completely fixed)
you are seeing the same issues as I am - i have a selction of atennas arriving in the next couple of days
i found re-enabling the config.txt setting and doing this improved the sticky one to the point where it is significantly better than the internal one… (i.e. the unit will now connect to Wi-Fi reliably in one room it was having issues in)
basically this atenna they supply appears to not be fit for purpose (at least the one in my kit)
i will have 5 or 6 different atenna to try tomrrow 
Make sure you dont place the new antenna directly against the metal case like the default antennas. If you have one that needs mounted (like the PCB style antenna im waiting for) use a plastic shim, double sided foam tape, or something else non metallic so it doesn’t change the antenna’s frequency.
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thanks, i have been playing with this Amazon.com
the underside seems to be nonconductive PCB substrate.
running in various locations internally wasn’t great (i.e. worse than the normal antenna) - but maybe if i had more plastic between it and the back of the case?
i had 20mbits stuck in this location you see in the picture below before i cut it to see what that would do (i have two of these so cutting one was a fun experiment)
with the ‘cutting of the pcb’ as shown i now get onlyy ~5 Mbits - but i get a reliable connection and more than the unstuck, dangling OEM atenna from my previous post.
to be clear this is in the most challenging room in the house, the native external antenna would refuse to reliably stay connected, this does.
I have this to try (but its larger than i was hoping for Amazon.com)
the other two i ordered i mis ordered and they came with the smaller IPEX connectors 
plan to try these next
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XN6WMX
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08T8F3GDT
(yes my selection of them is entirely random!)
(to be clear i have no idea what i am doing, i do these projects to learn new stuf!!)
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Nah, anywhere internal is probably a no go. Wont be very happy surrounded on all sides by metal. Ill be mounting mine externally with some foam tape for extra insulation similar to that pic in your post.
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I wasn’t surprised, I am more appreciative of the job laptop and cell phone engineers do
I would love to see picture of your eventual solution.
Why do you advise the use of foam if the substrate surface the sticky is on is non-conductive?
In laptops and even cellphones there is usually a plastic surface the antenna sits behind or section of metal that is isolated from the rest of the frame and used as part of the antenna, and the antennas are specially tuned for the position and materials around it. You can see these sections on an iPhone on the top right and bottom left corners where the case metal has a small plastic gap before turning back into metal, as seen in this picture I stole from iFixit.
As for the extra material, when you put an antenna against the metal the metal absorbs and dissipates the signal that hits it. Giving it a gap that is at least a fraction of the wavelength it is tuned for greatly improves its performance by giving the signal a path that isn’t straight into the loving embrace of sweet metallic oblivion.
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thanks, i have doublesided sticky tape of various thicknesses - one is a very thick 3m roll… will dig that out!
Is it possible to have the piece extend all the way so that two antennas can be mounted?
I forgot about that
What about mounting a pcb Antenna with double sided tape it could be mounted on the inside of the case
As soon as I have the dimension, or STL files, or my unit in hands, I am working on something like this:
I need the following:
Pink: ??mm
Yellow: ??mm
Red:??mm
Light Blue: ??mm
Blue: ??mm
Green: ??mm
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Sounds good in theory, but due to the construction of the uConsole I dont think you will get very good results. Having tried it with this antenna I can confirm that this one at least is completely useless when used internally, with signal levels of about -79dBm when mounted to the inside of the back panel above the expansion board.
On that note, I promised an update in this thread after I got my antenna, so here it is:
This antenna isnt the greatest, but is 100% more reliable for staying connected than the original antenna.This is the Adafruit antenna I linked above in post #34 of this thread. The new antenna gets about -68dBm average signal strength with -73dBm being the worst and -62dBm being the best recorded value. These numbers arent too far off from what I measured with the CWPi antenna, but the reliability in staying connected and transmission speed is massively improved.
Measurement notes:
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Source access point was set to max allowed output power in the US of 30dBm, meaning that -30dBm would be absolute perfect signal level and -90dBm is so weak you cant even connect (Quick reminder that dBm measurements are logarithmic, -30 to -60dBm is less significant than -60 to -70dBm). Measurements were taken in 5 second intervals with the iwconfig command from the terminal.
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I did not think to record speed numbers at the time when using the default CWPi antenna, so i will not report numbers here to avoid potentially inaccurate information.
External PCB antenna installation notes:
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The extra antenna cable was also curled near the SODIMM slot as mentioned by @oscillot in post #32 and demonstrated by @Glbr_Hanson in post #33 as this showed improvement in the uConsole’s default antenna
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The antenna was mounted to a piece of 2 sided foam tape and not directly to the uConsole body.
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I tried mounting the new antenna like @scyto demonstrates in post #45, but found it to be super inconvenient when needing to open the device, and it was also causing strain on the PCB solder joint when inserted in my carrying case.
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inside? don’t forget it has a full metal shell.
So hsavior’s idea seems to be the best route providing there is access to sd card slot and power switch
May have gotten the size right? Still waiting for the uConsole measurements, I did this based on pictures.
STL File: Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online.
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Looks great, wish i had a 3d printer to do the same
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