WiFi Card upgrade testing

[NightStorm]

thanks for the help, but I really suck at soldering! might try to find someone that can do the job for me, and thanks for the info about testing the U.fl Connectors, as I changed my wifi board with the MikroTik R11e-2Hnd, and I have had very bad range with solo after that, so I need to test if my connections to see if they are solid?

You need to be careful about getting antennas connected. If you powered on w/o the antennas connected there is a possibility that the board is fried.

 

[jetfueler]

yes thanks for the heads up I think maybe I did fry the wifi board(((

 

[Craig L. Johnson - USMC]

welcome.

 

[Craig L. Johnson - USMC]

I did see jeffueler response, before I replied.

 

[VintageToyMarbles]

Hi.
New to the board!
Got my 2 cards yesterday and setting up to install them. Got my here, seems to be the great price.
MikroTik&nbspR11e-2HnD - 2.4GHz HP miniPCI-e 11bgn Low Profile
https://www.streakwave.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=R11e-2HnD&eq=&Tp=&o1=0
Will let you know how it goes!

 

[Gemboo]

Yesterday I posted on another thread about testing I'm doing with WiFi card upgrades in the Solo.
The stock cards are mini PCIe and based on the Atheros AR9382 chip, both controller and Solo have these cards.
I've got a pair of MikroTik R11e-2Hnd (800mw) cards that I've been wanting to test, they're based
on the Atheros AR9580 chip. The Solo uses the ath9k driver that is compatible with a wide range of
Atheros based cards.

I've been regularly doing my testing at a local middle school/high school facility. It's not the cleanest
area for WiFi, especially with the surrounding neighborhood but it's only a few minutes from leaving home to flying.

With the stock wifi cards and stock antennas the max range I got was 600'-700' before RTH. This was pretty consistent.
With just the new Mikrotik wifi card in the Solo my range increased to 1500' before RTH.
Today with the controller also upgraded with a Mikrotik card I went over 2500' before RTH.

With a pair of router antennas I was getting 1300'-1500' before RTH with the stock wifi cards.
With just the Solo upgraded I reached 2300' before RTH.
Today with both the Solo and controller upgraded I reached over 3700' before RTH.

I also have a homebrew high db panel antenna that I reached just under 4000' with today but I'm finding it very difficult to aim when i get out that far.

Today is also very humid and cloudy day. Looks like rain soon.

I had a couple of concerns going into this:
1) would the new cards generate more heat and would that be a problem? So far this looks to be OK
2) would the newer cards eat more battery? This is still an open question but I haven't noticed any difference just on normal flying habits with the limited tests done so far.

Also of note I don't know the TX power of the stock wifi cards and I have yet to find a compatible linux command to display it on the Solo or controller (certain commands are missing). I also saw in one of the startup scripts that it *may* limit max TX power to 27dbm. I also don't know the exact TX power of the new Mikrotik cards, based on the results though the Mikrotik cards are significantly better.

More research needs to be done on this. I also need to do some testing from the command line to see if i can boost power from the Mokrotik cards.

So far so good. I'm pretty damn impressed right now.

I also planned on testing a 1W mimo booster I had but decided not to do it yet. I just don't feel like carrying around the booster, extra battery, cables etc...

I'll keep you all posted as this venture continues.

Yesterday I posted on another thread about testing I'm doing with WiFi card upgrades in the Solo.
The stock cards are mini PCIe and based on the Atheros AR9382 chip, both controller and Solo have these cards.
I've got a pair of MikroTik R11e-2Hnd (800mw) cards that I've been wanting to test, they're based
on the Atheros AR9580 chip. The Solo uses the ath9k driver that is compatible with a wide range of
Atheros based cards.

I've been regularly doing my testing at a local middle school/high school facility. It's not the cleanest
area for WiFi, especially with the surrounding neighborhood but it's only a few minutes from leaving home to flying.

With the stock wifi cards and stock antennas the max range I got was 600'-700' before RTH. This was pretty consistent.
With just the new Mikrotik wifi card in the Solo my range increased to 1500' before RTH.
Today with the controller also upgraded with a Mikrotik card I went over 2500' before RTH.

With a pair of router antennas I was getting 1300'-1500' before RTH with the stock wifi cards.
With just the Solo upgraded I reached 2300' before RTH.
Today with both the Solo and controller upgraded I reached over 3700' before RTH.

I also have a homebrew high db panel antenna that I reached just under 4000' with today but I'm finding it very difficult to aim when i get out that far.

Today is also very humid and cloudy day. Looks like rain soon.

I had a couple of concerns going into this:
1) would the new cards generate more heat and would that be a problem? So far this looks to be OK
2) would the newer cards eat more battery? This is still an open question but I haven't noticed any difference just on normal flying habits with the limited tests done so far.

Also of note I don't know the TX power of the stock wifi cards and I have yet to find a compatible linux command to display it on the Solo or controller (certain commands are missing). I also saw in one of the startup scripts that it *may* limit max TX power to 27dbm. I also don't know the exact TX power of the new Mikrotik cards, based on the results though the Mikrotik cards are significantly better.

More research needs to be done on this. I also need to do some testing from the command line to see if i can boost power from the Mokrotik cards.

So far so good. I'm pretty damn impressed right now.

I also planned on testing a 1W mimo booster I had but decided not to do it yet. I just don't feel like carrying around the booster, extra battery, cables etc...

I'll keep you all posted as this venture continues.

ISP supplies has the wifi cards in stock in Texas. I just purchased a pair delivered for $74.00. Taxes FedEx shipping and all. 16 Aug 2017

 

[brianuc4]

ISP supplies has the wifi cards in stock in Texas. I just purchased a pair delivered for $74.00. Taxes FedEx shipping and all. 16 Aug 2017

Just found their website earlier when I was looking around online. Going to be ordering some when funds allow. However, it was $82.12 with taxes and the cheapest shipping so I guess they raised their price a bit. Still better prices than other stores though.

 

[brianuc4]

Hi.
New to the board!
Got my 2 cards yesterday and setting up to install them. Got my here, seems to be the great price.
MikroTik&nbspR11e-2HnD - 2.4GHz HP miniPCI-e 11bgn Low Profile
Will let you know how it goes!

Did you ever install your cards? If so how did they perform?

 

[Douglas A]

I bought mine from the Streakwave guys. Work great and fast shipping. No brainer for me.

 

[dneelands]

Ya. 67.44 shipped for two and excellent customer service.

 

[VintageToyMarbles]

Hi. Yes I did install both cards.
but.......... I used a old glue gun (15+ years old) to secure the antenna's on both.
I haven't really been flying, but I'm worried about the old glue coming off.
This weekend I'm going back in and redoing the glue.
I had a real real real hard time making the antenna snap in place.. .. and stay in place.
(is there a secret to that?)
...but to answer your question, they seem to be working!
(I also have the HERE with pixhawk 2.1, 2 lidar systems and some other stuff to install one of these days.)
VTM Drone's - YouTube
keep track with above link...
...more later!!

 

[mike_kelly]

For anyone else wanting to do this upgrade Baltic Networks has a much better price on the cards at under $30.
MikroTik 802.11b/g/n 2GHz 800mW MiniPCI-Express Wireless Card (with 2 uFL connectors)

 

[fanf]

I'm not sure how to modify the drone .... (brownout afraid)
For those who have made the change for a long time
advise/recommend you this mod ?

 

[Dronecarrot]

I've been doing some tinkering this past week. When i was looking at different WiFi cards and looking into the ath9k driver I came across some interesting posts where some people running dd-wrt were patching the ath9k driver to patch the regulatory domain in the driver to override the restrictions. This allows you to operate on restricted channels and to increase TX-Power.

Last week on the FB Solo mod group a patch was briefly posted and removed. But i grabbed a copy while it was posted. I had no idea it would (possibly) be compatible with the Solo.

I applied the patch to my Solo and controller:

root@3dr_controller:~# chmod 777 reghack
root@3dr_controller:~# ./reghack /lib/modules/3.10.17*/extra/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko
Patching @ 0x000229a0: core world6 regdomain in cfg80211/reg.o
Patching @ 0x000237f4: embedded US regdomain in cfg80211/regdb.o
Patching @ 0x000284b8: embedded 00 regdomain in cfg80211/regdb.o
root@3dr_controller:~# ./reghack /lib/modules/3.10.17*/extra/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath.ko
Patching @ 0x00002a4c: ath world regdomain with 5 rules in ath/regd.o
Patching @ 0x00002aec: ath world regdomain with 4 rules in ath/regd.o
Patching @ 0x00002b70: ath world regdomain with 3 rules in ath/regd.o
Patching @ 0x00002bd8: ath world regdomain with 3 rules in ath/regd.o
Patching @ 0x00002c40: ath world regdomain with 4 rules in ath/regd.o
root@3dr_controller:~#

These are the before and after results for channels:

Before the Patch:
Frequencies:
* 2412 MHz [1] (30.0 dBm)
* 2417 MHz [2] (30.0 dBm)
* 2422 MHz [3] (30.0 dBm)
* 2427 MHz [4] (30.0 dBm)
* 2432 MHz [5] (30.0 dBm)
* 2437 MHz [6] (30.0 dBm)
* 2442 MHz [7] (30.0 dBm)
* 2447 MHz [8] (30.0 dBm)
* 2452 MHz [9] (30.0 dBm)
* 2457 MHz [10] (30.0 dBm)
* 2462 MHz [11] (30.0 dBm)
* 2467 MHz [12] (disabled)
* 2472 MHz [13] (disabled)
* 2484 MHz [14] (disabled)

After the patch:
Frequencies:
* 2412 MHz [1] (30.0 dBm)
* 2417 MHz [2] (30.0 dBm)
* 2422 MHz [3] (30.0 dBm)
* 2427 MHz [4] (30.0 dBm)
* 2432 MHz [5] (30.0 dBm)
* 2437 MHz [6] (30.0 dBm)
* 2442 MHz [7] (30.0 dBm)
* 2447 MHz [8] (30.0 dBm)
* 2452 MHz [9] (30.0 dBm)
* 2457 MHz [10] (30.0 dBm)
* 2462 MHz [11] (30.0 dBm)
* 2467 MHz [12] (30.0 dBm)
* 2472 MHz [13] (30.0 dBm)
* 2484 MHz [14] (disabled)

Channels 12 and 13 are now active. I manually edited hostapd.conf and added channel 13 to test it out. I'm using a US Samsung galaxy tab pro 8.4 and it would not see channel 13. My laptops have no problem. I ended up flashing and trying a few different ROM's on my tablet until I found one that worked well. I just got it up and running today where I can use channel 13.

Now the next thing I'll try, maybe over the weekend is bumping up the TX-Power of the controller. I have no interest in doing that to the Solo. I'm going to try just increasing it 1 additional dBm (from 27 to 28). I just wish there was a command line tool on the Solo to show me that the parameters are working.

I'll see how it goes........

Do u still have the file and some details about the experience?