Some interesting things at Chip antenna vs u.FL connector . I have 15 Photons which work great in the hall about 30 feet from the schools access point (wifi router). However behind steel doors to the classroom the Photons randomly will not connect. So I need to look into the antenna’s. I tried the syringe hack see image but it did not seem to help. I managed to get a u.fl connector whip style antenna from a laptop screen, but it also did not seem to be much better.
A friend gave me a duck style u.FL connected antenna. it seemed to be about 20% better than the chip antenna.
Something strange is that assigning the antenna also seems to make things another 20 percent better.
//STARTUP(WiFi.selectAntenna(ANT_INTERNAL));
//STARTUP(WiFi.selectAntenna(ANT_AUTO));
STARTUP(WiFi.selectAntenna(ANT_EXTERNAL));
Yesterday I could barely walk 20 feet from my front door with the chip antenna, today I could walk 100 feet, with the chip, 120 feet with the antenna defined, and 150 feet with the duck antenna. Kind of strange.
Another irritating part is that if you lose connectivity you have to return about 50% of the distance to get the connection, then you can walk the full distance again.
Hopefully the duck antenna can solve my classroom issue