Anyone who bought a uConsole without 4G gets the blank board. (It’s still used for the speakers.)
When I emailed Alex about my order status I got a confusing answer. I asked if I could add the blank extension board to ship with my order (I also got 4g module) and they said that they could not change my order but to ask them(?) about it. I’m assuming they meant they could send it to me after I received my order in a different order but I somehow needed to make it an official request.
Their response:
“The extra Ext.board can not be added into the parcel, because we can not change what is supposed to be in the box, due to customs rules.
But you can contact me for that.”
re: the wifi antenna thing, the bit about attaching it directly to the chassis is definitely what’s causing the issue - you can confirm just through detaching it.
the go-to solutions of attaching a pigtail or installing a shim are both super overkill, though. all you need to do to achieve quite usable performance is attach the wlan attenna on top of the 4g antenna, or a very small piece of electrical tape if you ordered a wifi-only model.
for reference, at my job in a small office, with the wifi antenna in the standard position i could use wifi sporadically at my desk, which is about 20ft/~7m from the 2.4g AP in use (wrt1900acs if anyone is curious). this is with minimal physical obstruction (a thin LDF board wall ~1" thick) and no significant source of interference.
by moving the uconsole’s wifi antenna atop the 4g, i would estimate an approximate 100-200% performance improvement, considering i was able to get reliable performance at approximately 40-45ft and sporadic at almost a full sixty feet out from the AP.
for context, the WRT1900ACS used is equipped with its stock omni antennae. i suspect that if the uconsole was equipped with a pigtail or a tiny directional antenna performance would be even greater.
tl;dr stop drilling holes and shoving in shims if you just want reliable wifi, you can use electrical tape or the 4g antenna to isolate the wifi antenna from the chassis.
If you want good WiFi you need to change out the stock antenna. With my stubby antenna I can be on the other side of my house and WiFi is perfect. (100+ away from AP)
Some people just like modding I’ve cut up parts of the PCB to make room for my SDR to lay flat.
Plus I’ve drilled a hole for the SDR.
Also I think the external mounted antenna is inline with the industrial feel of the uConsole.
Could you post some more pictures of your antenna mods? I’m trying to figure out if I need to modify any of the internal components for this to work properly. I would like to be able to add 3 total antenna if possible (WiFi/BT, 4g, LoRa) and I’m really not interested in using a 3d printed bracket to hold them.
I didn’t have to modify any of the PCBs up top. My suggestion is to get the edge of the nut for the SMA right against the top of the back of the case to give the most clearance from the PCB. Mark and drill the hole, drill real slow in the magnesium case. I’ll get a pic of the inside for you when I get to the office.
Do you have a recommended brand/part for the antenna?
No I just “borrowed” some we had laying around the office. Any u.fl to sma-rp cable will work and then a RP-SMA Wi-Fi antenna stubby and you should be good.
Hi. Where did you get a blank PCB expansion board?
the blank one came with the uConsole
I bought an official Raspi Antenna just because they specify it for 2.4 as well as 5 Ghz. Most others will probably work too but since I had to get one anyway, i just took the original.
This antenna mod solved my problems quite well
Cheap, hidden, good enough.
Just looking to gauge interest in 3G LTE antenna heel
I used this project to teach myself how to model something for 3D printing in On Shape. I have created this heel to hold a 8dBi antenna that is for the frequencies ranges of 698-960 MHz, 1710-2170 MHz, 2300-2700 MHz. It is the 13mmx95mm style, so this heel will just hold it well.
I am prototyping in white PLA+, but I have some silver PET-G and Silver TPU on order that should be later this week. Either material should work well, but the TPU is more expensive an might turn the heal into a bit of a shock protection bumper if you were to drop it and it happened to land on it. I’m interested to see which looks more like the metal back.
The heel is attached in 3 points. The two bottom screws to the back of the case, and a 6mm/1/4" through-hole you have to drill on the bottom of the battery hump, over on the far side where the battery pack is not. The through hole also acts as a built in grommet that prevents the metal hole from coming in contact with the antenna pigtail.
Anyhow, would anyone be interested in these?
I am not looking to make any money here, but building them is a bit involved. So I was thinking that $20/ea plus actual shipping cost. Today I can only provide some pictures of the plastic prototype in white and the antenna I will be using. If there is interest, I can come back and show both the PET-G and the TPU options and let you know if and how much this improves my 4G signal over just using a 1/8" rubber shim between it and the body.
This mod looks like it would also work well for this style antenna for Wifi. If the antenna was attached to your bracket, you would kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Larger wifi antenna and the antenna also being uncoupled/insulated from the back case, since one of the biggest problems with the stock antenna was its stock location being on the metal chassis.
Just food for thought. You wouldn’t be limiting yourself to just 3G antenna sales.
Even though I have a panda wifi adapter shoehorned inside plugged into the USB bus, I would take one of these for a wifi antenna to plug directly into the CM4.
Sharing my 4G + RTLSDR v4 mod, since there were no examples of it on the internet that I could find.
You can just about see the stock WiFi antenna mounted on a 3D printed spacer, very easy mod, didn’t even need to open the case, doubled the range on my WiFi and still looks stock from the outside. Not as good as a proper antenna obviously, but I didn’t want antennas sticking out, or any 3D printed brackets visible.
4G seems to work ok even with a gimped antenna.
Yes, provided that I didn’t attempt to reuse the antenna that comes with the kit. The cable would be too short. So in the same way I would include these with the LTE antenna already embedded into the part, I would need to do it with a 2.5GHz / 5Ghz Wi-Fi antenna embedded into the part. I guess in short the final part is actually a custom antenna for the uConsole rather than an assembly from an end user perspective.
If I were to go this route, I would need to probably emboss text for LTE and Wi-Fi into the back wall that goes up against the battery hump to make them easy to identify.
I also intend to include a couple M4x8mm screws that match the M4x6mm screws that come with the uConsole. That way you have screws that are longer, but look exactly the same as the stock ones.
All sounds great!
Put me down for a Wifi model. Im in the midwest.
DM Me and we can work out the details. For shipping, I am thinking probably just USPS flat rate packaging. It makes it predictable, as nothing changes no matter how much I shove in the package. Package size selection is the only factor.
I will need some lead time, as I am sourcing the antennas from Ali Express. However, I think I found a good, embedded Wi-Fi antenna with a proper length pigtail and the correct IPEX-1/UF.L connectors.
Also, size wise, I could probably also make a version with both LTE and Wi-Fi inside the same unit. Internally the LTE would fix diagonally, facing away from the battery hump, and the Wi-Fi would attach flat to the wall opposite and parallel to the battery hump. That said, I don’t know enough about RF propagation to know if the two would interfere with each other when in that close proximity. The way they mount stock, you would assume not, but I think we pretty much agree the stock mounting sucks. That is why we are even talking about this. My gut tells me that unless the various frequency bands have harmonics that align with each other, it should be fine. I’m not an engineer though.
I got myself an orange trackball off amazon that I think looks pretty spiffy. I also added in the 3 UBC port hub that someone is selling on here. Pretty awesome stuff.
I’ve had this for over a month now? This device is amazing.
Ohwell looks like i ordered a non 4g extention board for nothing just for fun have you tryed runnung 4g plus the sdr at the same time?