Kotuku
December 1, 2017, 2:45pm
2
Below is a close-up of my 2016 board. The ground plane has been easy to find (outlined in green). Do I have the center of the coax being soldered to the right connection point (circled in red)?
I am consolidating a bunch of links and images below that will hopefully help get to the bottom of exactly where the center of the coax should be soldered to. (I know @canmoose2 and @ShootAnyAngle along with many others have had similar questions.)
@gua742 , it’s very impressive that you were able to open the housing without damaging the board!
Regarding your request, unfortunately we cannot help you attach an external antenna since it voids the warranty and the FCC certification, BUT we can share with you public information we have sent to Agency Certification Lab, such as photos below. That being said, good luck!
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[IMG_4810]
At lunch today I did some soldering and got my SMA jumper placed on the board! This will link up directly to an SMA to N connector adapter that will go directly into the high gain antenna! I can’t wait to get home and test it out!
How will I test it? Good question! I have a field strength meter that I will compare against this design and a regular GoTenna Mesh unit. If this was connected correctly I should get at least twice the output reading from the high gain antenna VS a regular GoTenna Mes…
That’s an interesting thought… so I decided to pull out my multimeter to see if there was conductivity between the pads and the internal antenna. Testing between the four ground pads and the ground plane I was able to get a connection. Look at the photo below and see the two points I tested on the opposite site of the board and the center of the MMCX pads. The green highlighted point I was able to get a connection and the red was no connection. So I think you are correct perhaps… [251F0B9C-07A4…
Received a few MMCX jacks today and they go on great. It’s the Molex 73415-2061 50 ohms vertical surface mount MMCX jack, which I selected primarily because it was the cheapest one on mouser. You’ve really got to be comfortable with hot air rework to get it on. Presumably only the 2017 V1.0 goTenna Mesh board has a place for this connector?
Preliminary tests are good, but I don’t have a scope that goes to 1Ghz or an appropriate down converter to really test it out. I suppose my next step is…
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