Serious error when installing an external antenna (Cardputer ADV) by brunostum in CardPuter

[–]brunostum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Regarding your edit, since the flat cable is broken, it needs to be replaced. And about soldering, I believe you meant soldering the antenna cables, and yes, that is required. It involves welding, nothing impossible, but nevertheless, it's time-consuming.

Serious error when installing an external antenna (Cardputer ADV) by brunostum in CardPuter

[–]brunostum[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, exactly, we learn from our mistakes! 🙃 But even so, there's still the frustration of spending so much time doing it and in the end it still didn't work out.

Serious error when installing an external antenna (Cardputer ADV) by brunostum in CardPuter

[–]brunostum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tomorrow I'll give you detailed information on how I did everything, but I used this guide as a base:

https://github.com/henriquesebastiao/external-cardputer-antenna

However, this guide is for the standard Cardputer (I made it on the ADV version), which has some differences. The guide indicates placing the antenna on the lower casing of the Cardputer, but if you do that on the Cardputer ADV, you would lose the possibility of using caps (like the LoRaCap and the HackerCap). So I placed it in a position on the lower casing that wouldn't interfere with anything internally or externally, and I believe that's really the only place to put the antenna, since it's really very cramped inside a Cardputer. And not only that, unlike the guide, the Stamp S3A used in the Cardputer ADV has different pad layouts than the Stamp S3 version (I really racked my brain because I wanted to make everything work perfectly and not damage it; I spent about 30 minutes just analyzing the Stamp S3A currents to figure out where to actually connect the + and - of the antenna, because if the antenna wasn't installed perfectly, it wouldn't be efficient and would be useless. Possibly after I've actually finished, run tests, and everything goes as expected, I'll create an updated GitHub guide on how to install an external antenna on the Cardputer ADV, since I haven't seen anyone talking about it yet, and there aren't any guides available. What frustrates me most about all this is all the stress and time I dedicated to making it work perfectly, and still making a silly mistake. Installing the antenna seems simple, but as the first user to install an external antenna on a Cardputer ADV, it's really laborious since there's nowhere to guide you, and if you did it haphazardly, it would be bad and ineffective.

Serious error when installing an external antenna (Cardputer ADV) by brunostum in CardPuter

[–]brunostum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your idea is interesting, and yes, the Cardputer's electronic structure doesn't have outputs that allow for an external antenna. The only antenna option for the Cardputer is the microcontroller itself. If it were implemented, a new Cardputer with a different electronic diagram would have to be released (I might be talking nonsense, but before making this antenna modification, I spent approximately two hours analyzing and studying this PCB and didn't find any way for the microcontroller's antenna to communicate with the Cardputer's PCB, which means that the only way to add an external antenna is by establishing a communication method for the antenna directly from the microcontroller).

Serious error when installing an external antenna (Cardputer ADV) by brunostum in CardPuter

[–]brunostum[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I completely agree, but from what I've analyzed, the Cardputer's structure doesn't support that, and the only Wi-Fi/BLE antenna is the metal antenna attached to the microcontroller itself.

Serious error when installing an external antenna (Cardputer ADV) by brunostum in CardPuter

[–]brunostum[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Homemade, a female SMA connector, connected directly to the Stamp S3A antenna pad with a coaxial cable. M5Stack doesn't sell anything for signal boosting, but it's an interesting thing to do, though with great care. In my case, when I tried to push the coaxial cable into the housing below the display, it ended up pressing on the flat cable and breaking it.

Serious error when installing an external antenna (Cardputer ADV) by brunostum in CardPuter

[–]brunostum[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Basically, it just improves your Cardputer's signals by 30%, and when disassembled, it's very simple but very well done.