ESP8266 Community Forum

- Sat Feb 07, 2015 4:04 pm #9208 Hi forum

Yesterday I received two shiny ESP-201. I ran some tests to figure out the improvement of sensitivity when using the external antenna. IMHO it is quite impressive, not gonna use those on-board antennas anymore if I have the choice;-). I also found a way to put them on a tiny breadboard, mere brut force actually...
You'll finde the whole review here:
http://blog.squix.ch/2015/02/esp8266-esp-201-breakout-board-review.html

Cheers,
Dani

http://blog.squix.ch

- Sun Feb 08, 2015 1:01 pm #9268 That's a great writeup, thanks. I ended up unsoldering the serial pins and resoldering them facing up. This way, I can eventually solder the module into a circuit and have the pins available for firmware updates. Now, if someone would just come out with a cheap module which includes a LDO, life would be great!

- Sun Feb 08, 2015 4:24 pm #9278 Interesting writeup, thanks.

With the external antenna plugged in, it appears as though the esp transceiver is connected to both antennas at once (in parallel), and therefore seeing 25ohms load instead of the 50ohms that it is designed for.

I wonder if cutting the traces to the internal antenna ( near the top of the U in the photo) would make a noticeable difference?

Cheers,

telecnatron blog

- Mon Feb 09, 2015 2:07 am #9294 Looking at the photos, I'm not even sure that the PCB antenna is connected. It kinda looks like the 0ohm resistor is meant for antenna selection.

@squix78: could you check using a multimeter, if the PCB antenna is actually connected?