Topic: Wi-Fi dongle replacement - external antenna?
Good day!
I just purchased a set of "Chumby Guts" from the Make! Magazine store, and have spent the last few days exploring it.
Getting it up and running the first time was a bit of an adventure, as has been using it because the wi-fi connection is, to put it nicely, abysmal. I had to activate it while sitting physically next to the router, and have had to use it in a less-than-preferred location because I simply can't get a usable signal anywhere else.
Sitting on the corner of my desk with the wi-fi dongle facing the direction of the router, it has less than a thirty-foot clear shot at the router's antennas, and it just barely gets enough of a signal to maintain a wi-fi connection (it frequently drops out if someone stands between the Chumby and the router).
In the "Chumby Info" screen, on the bottom-most line which reports the signal quality, a typical report from the corner of my desk might read:
link quality: 27
signal: -84 dBm
noise: -115 dBm
This signal shows up as zero to one bar on the menu screen.
Sitting on a desk in the office, about three feet away from the router, I get the strongest signals:
link quality: 67
signal: -72dBm
noise: -107 dBm
This signal appears as 2 to 3 bars on the menu screen.
This just seems to be awfully low reception quality to me, especially considering that other devices on the network (again, a number of them using micro-strip antennas similar to that on the Chumby dongle) have no problem with this same connection at three and four times the range. Removing the dongle from the riser card and placing it at the end of a USB extension cable away from the unit does not improve the reception.
As I mentioned before, I received my Chumby as a "guts" package from Make! Magazine. I'm going to be building my unit into an enclosure of some sort soon. In so doing, I would like to use an external antenna for the Wi-fi connection. To me, the most readily apparent solution to both of these situations would seem to be replacing the Chumby's dongle with another USB Wi-fi adaptor, which includes an SMA antenna jack.
In browsing - and then searching - the forums here, I have not been able to discern if there is an easy solution to swapping the dongle with another as a drop-in replacement. Are there any units out there which are a direct replacement for the Xterasys dongle (doesn't require software modification), and have a connector for an external antenna?
Thanks for any assistance you can provide - aside from the wi-fi range issues, I am really enjoying my new Chumby.
