Possibly, with all the stability issues in RC.25, I think the out-of-the-box range can only improve. I just bought some external antennas and I’ll be testing soon. But I’m still ready for the RC.26 firmware to improve things.
Sweet, thank you for posting this result.
Could you please state what antennas you did the test with ?
BR
I used the ones I linked above. I’ve had the marco polo test running for about a week now and sometimes still do miss a response. Once the whole mesh stopped responding and i had to restart the gateway. I’m not really keen on investigating too much more till 0.8.0-rc26 comes out, since folks here are saying that it improves mesh stability significantly.
Hey folks! Wanted to jump into this thread to let folks know that RC.26 has been released with a couple of improvements that should improve the effective range between 3rd Gen devices.
- Increased the default nRF52840 transmit power by 8dBm
- Resolved some OpenThread stability issues which limit effective range of a device connected via a gateway device to the Particle Cloud
Instructions for upgrading are available here:
Hi there, I updated an Argon and some Xenons to the latest FW v0.8.0-rc.26 last Friday. As expected the +8dBm improved the range nicely. I placed the Argon outside the window on the first floor and started walking away from home with a Xenon in my hands. The test was perfomed with both devices having an external antenna for mesh and running the above mentioned Marco-Polo code.
600m (660 yards) are not a problem, if you have a clear line of sight! I probably could have gone even further, but I reached the nearby forest/hills where the clear line of sight ends…;-).
But if you are behind concrete buildings its a totally different story. I got approx. 10-50m.
That’s all for now…
So the antennas really help. I’m going to order some. Thanks for sharing.
My previous tests with no external antenna and with pre-RC26 was seeing reliability fall off around 150 Feet (50 yards / 46 meters).
Was that with the built in antennas?
He states:
Does this selectExternalMeshAntenna() function enable Bluetooth on the external u.FL antenna (as it shares the Mesh radio)? I’m not seeing any change in my Bluetooth range when I run this function in STARTUP.
Thanks!
-Tim
The function might not work from STARTUP. Or you may need to set the pinMode to OUTPUT if you do call it from there.
I used SYSTEM_THREAD(ENABLED) and put the call in setup().
Yes, it affects both BLE and mesh.
Man, I totally forgot about needing to manually set the Bluetooth antenna to external on the Argon and Xenons when I have a antenna attached to the BT Connector. I thought it was automatic now for some odd reason.
No wonder I have been getting less range that I was expecting with the external antennas attached.
Update! - Added this code and BLE range is so much better now!
Hi @rickkas7
Good Morning,
I am wondering if you can comment on the my past at Find if Onchip or External Antenna being used.
I am trying to confirm if ANTSW1 will work for Particle p1 chip as well??
Thanks
Amogh
It’s completely different on the Photon and P1, the code above is only for Gen 3 devices (Argon, Boron, Xenon).