ESP8266 Community Forum

- Sun Jul 16, 2017 9:51 am #68269

One thing to do is to make sure you use the shortest connecting cable you can. There are some long cheap antenna cables being sold and they are horrible. The longer the cable the more loss you will get. And if the cable is made of cheap crap the losses multiply quickly.

I do have the hardware but haven't had time to test out performance of different antenna configurations.

I have the antenna you've posted attached to the module, but the range is still bad.
And yes, now I have the antenna selected (by moving the 0 Ohm resistor)
Even when I put the module in open air, 20m further I have a signal of -90db (according to my Wifi Analyser app).

Strange because I read posts of people that get 120m or more with it..

- Sun Jul 16, 2017 11:27 am #68272 My experience has been about 20m with both the pcb antenna and the duck antenna with the 0 hm resistor removed. Both the pcb and the duck antenna have wide lobes since that is what most uses require. To have the range that others claim they are very probably using a reflective parabolic antenna and/or boosting the signal at the receiving end. Much of what we see as testing is throwing things at the wall and reporting back what was seen. The reason a specific result is obtained is often omitted. No one is expecting an explanation as detailed as Maxwell's electro-magnetic differential field equations but it is nice if some explanation is offered.

- Sun Jul 16, 2017 12:49 pm #68273 I will try and do some tests in the next few days to see what I get.

But a quick test on my desk was a bit surprising. One module is a ESP-12E and the other is a ESP-07S with an external antenna. I am getting a 10db higher signal with the ESP-07S and the external antenna. Now this is not the same as an antenna swap but still using the same module. So I am cautious about the magnitude of the difference. Some might be due to other factors.