Pi Zero W External Antenna Mod | Supercharge Wifi
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- MalDuino! Learn More: malduino.com
Any links I could find had very low stock, so you'll need to do some searching to find what you'll need which is... a ufl smd connector, ufl cable, antenna (2.4ghz) and of course a pi zero w!
If you have any questions/queries regarding this video, please ask them in my subreddit linked below.
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Check out my site: www.seytonic.com
My Subreddit: / seytopia
Follow me on twitter: / seytonic
![Add External Antenna to Pi Zero 2 W [Comparison, Tutorial, and Benchmarks]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6R8xhSzpJTU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Add External Antenna to Pi Zero W [Tutorial]](/img/n.gif)
That's cool, I had no idea the Zero W had a footprint for that connector. I was expecting something much more hackish as a result.
this definitely makes sense if the RPi is in metal enclosure as I plan to do. Thanks for the tips
*Screws up on camera*
"Hey, yeah, it'll be alright..."
I like your attitude. Subbed.
Excellent work. Interesting video and great filmmaking. You had me at that transition at 0:14. Subbed!
I recommend using a 'fine tip', very common in smallish/average pcb work. Your 'monster sized' tip is frying near by planets. That girth will increase the chances of sucking up your components, a fine tip point has much less thermal reach outside the solder point area.
Like you, I've come across the over zoom problem, it's actually impossible to tell depth, it feels like you're swinging around a large weight on a spring.. I trashed all my magnifying glass solder stations and ended up with +1.5 or +2 set of plastic glasses from the Dollar store. They work great, excellent magnification without loss of depth perception. - Give it a shot.
I've been trying to figure out what is considered as a fine tip soldering iron. Could you post a link to one?
Those antennas are HALF an antenna (verticals). If you installed them so they had a ground plane to work against you'd see a significant difference
what
what?
Nice, now if I want to put this in a metal case I can have the antenna outside and still have a good signal.
Dry solder joins! You need flux!
Cover the small resistor in flux, then de-solder it and wipe it from the iron.
may by you can use it once more.
Cover the connector in flux and solder it.
After than clean everything with IPA 99% alcohol.
A very fine tip dont transfer heat good, but a good one is a key too.
Dude, when you SMD solder, TWEEZERS. It'll help with components getting moved around by the iron and whatnot.
Tweezers in one hand, soldering iron in your other hand, solder in your third hand and use your fourth to hold the board. Easy as 1 2 3 4
And use some rosin soldering flux paste, it really helps the solder flow giving you nice clean solder joints.
his soldering iron is way too hot anyway, looks like 400 C to me. Should be around 275-320 C
Antenna are not powerful or less powerful. Antenna have gain and the gain will vary based on antenna design. SO your showing not how much power an antenna has but the relative gain of each antenna.
You should have used a fine tip soldering iron. I've worked in electronics industry for many years and found easy ways to work on surface mounts like this. Also, a pcb cleaner wouldn't hurt, it'll clean any flux and dirty stuff making it clear to show any accidental shorts.
Thank you for the very descriptive and to the point video
I have a idea........ you could make a mini wifi pineapple with the nodeMCU or this raspberry to hack wifis with a android phone etc......would be cool!
Clear video, well explained. You have another subscriber 👍 thank you for sharing
Small antennas between 2-9 have no real gain although that number refers to receive rate.
cool videa , maybe you can do your next one on PoisonTap since you have a pi0 now?
second this
yeah!!!!!
lol that picture of crypto from DAH was probably my background at the same time this video came out
is it possible to have the internal antenna and the socket for the external antenna at the same time by just removing the in line jumper resistor and soldering both points
Can't wait to get my malduino.
So wait we don't need the resistor? Can we just use solder to connect the joints? 🤔
measured the value of resistor right on PCB....genius....
Use some flux and clean it with alcohol.
Those solder-joints look disgusting.
Suprised you can see those joints from up on your high horse.
I got panda pau06 wifi adapter it has 2dbi antenna, i attached 9dbi antenna to it i don't know whether that antenna is working or not, can any one tell me how to check that?
Put a smartphone camera on a box and with 8x digital zoom you got yourself a janky but workable smd recording and working setup
+3 dBm is doubling the received power. so change from -90dBm to -88dBm is ~60% increase, and -35dBm -> -23dBm is ~15x improvement.
The external antenna thing can be pretty good indeed, especially if you use an external directional antenna.
Could you test the case where you have ext-ant connector in parallel with the PCB-antenna so that both are connected at the same time, can it be just plugged in if need?
Thanks for explaining the numbers, in hindsight I should've looked that up before making the video. I'll give your idea a go and report back when I have an update.
I think the jumper connects only one route at any time because having both connected creates multi-path problems and/or upsets impedance matching.
but is it a resistor? are we sure it isn't a jumpwir... it was a jumpwire. It think it's there exactly for the purpose of being removed if an external antenna is needed.
Would you be able to do something similar with the NodeMCU Wifi development board you featured in an earlier video?
Yayyyyyy new videoooooo!!!!!good job!!!!!
Will you make a video about Poison Tab?
Awesome Video, keep up the great work!
I did this by naked eye and with larger solder iron tip. It was a mother loving nightmare. I would not attempt this operation again without the proper equipment. That resistor he removes is about the size of 2 grains of sand.
Great video! Could you compare the signal strength to a modern smartphone, wonder how the pi stacks up against it.
Can we just add a slide button there and switch between antenas?
Well, I recently came into possession of an RC boat that's, not great. It uses 433MHz RF, but the controller board is not great. I think the relays are going bad. So I thought i'd throw in a PI Zero w and control it with wifi and add in a pi cam, it might be cool! I want to be sure though that the wifi range would be good enough.
"more powerful antenna" hmm.
I have wifi amplifier
Do you have any experience with amplifiers?
Will it cause any damage?
2 things.
A I thought the pi zero w had dual band wifi, thus why did you only choose 2.4Ghz antenna? Please explain this one.
B You were so close to transmitter during test that any measurable gain from your antenna would be almost nullified.
keep in mind a 2dBm gain is similar to 2x the signal...
+2dB = x1.585 more power signal : (P=10^(G/10))
@@cLxJaggy thx
i love this channel
I’m looking to do this on a pi zero W boosting a Wi-Fi signal not wired like shown but I’m struggling to find a tutorial that is showing this specifically is this possible with routerypi
Yo, you forgot to put the Malduino link in the description
Ah, thanks for the heads up.
sir
can you please tell me how much area we are able to increase by using this antenna ?
what was the recommended equipment? a heat table or something? going to do a portable headless (using my android phone as a monitor/keyboard/internet) pi0w build starting at the end of next month and want to have my ducks in a row.
also, can you do a test with bluetooth please? I think bluetooth will use the same antenna as it works over the same wavelengths and the chip does both, but i'd like to check. the case I have is metal so I will need the external antenna to work for both wifi and bluetooth.
What if you would have soldered a large blob of solder on all 3 pins? would you be able to use external, and internal antenna?
I've heard the direction the internal antenna is facing matters. Was that something you replicated in this testing?
FYI, malduino is not badusb.
Nice Video, but Coups you do a follow up on the raspi lan turtle video? Something like using the usbplug for data and using it as an Ethernet adapter or allow it to use PoE. Thanks
what about your standing wave ratio?
Simply put some additional solder on the component for desoldering it.
Before?
@@socrates_the_great6209 Put as much solder on it such that the tip of the solder iron reaches both sides via the additional solder.
I have a number of questions.
Ok you have 4 networks ... what was the distance between each network and the Pi0w?
Did each network use the same equipment? (i.e. the same router (with the same TX/RX power))
What TX/RX channels were the networks on and could there have been any interference from other networks?
Were the external antennae positioned in the same orientation as the Pi0w?
How many times did you run the 'sudo iwlist wlan0 scan' command?
How long were the external antennae? (For a 2.4 GHz signal the ideal antenna length is 125 mm)
The test wasn't scientific, just on various networks I picked up in my area to get a feel for how beneficial having a bigger antenna was.
should I do this if it's in an Altoids can
Where are the Parts in the ddescription i need to do this!!!
This is especially usefull if you want to build the pi into a metal box. Otherwise, I would not bother.
man, i wish they made an updated Pi zero with better specs...
Thanks for the video =)
Hi, great video and like you, im crap at soldering. Is it possible to cut off the plug on the end of the antenna and solder the antenna cable directly to the board rather than trying to solder on the fiddly little socket??
I guarantee you that would make things more difficult to solder, the connection wouldn't be that great and it would break off real easy. The socket is worth it!
Hello, love your videos but I have a question. I have a couple esp8266s and want to know something, from most videos would I be able to solder an antenna directly to the built in one? And is there any better way than that
I have a project that involves putting the pi in something that blocks the wifi, with an antenna, I can lead the antenna out of it's anti-RF coffin
how about a really cheap wifiphisher drop box to harvest wifi keys? will need 2 antennas though!
i have short to antenna any problem in my BLE DATA
and BLE AND WIFI Antenna both work in one antenna
that soldering LOL
You really have to solder that connection diagonally? They should have made crossing that orthogonal, or even better: simply added a jumper there.
Modded mine too. Due to the tiny size, it was very tricky and I could not be sure, if the bridge-wire (I also wasted my 0 Ohm resistor...) was properly connected. So I had a few resolder -> reboot -> check-wifi -> repeat moments. In the end, I had decent wifi quality.
No links to materials in the description :-(
There's also …uhm, what's the proper / technical term?… radiation pattern …direction(-ality) …something something, mumble …the antenna design. The zero W's internal antenna, according to my laymen's understanding of RF voodoo, doesn't seem to be omni-directional, like the modded external ones. That internal one's signal strength might depend on the mounting position / orientation of the whole Pi. An external antenna should be far more flexible. Thank you, i didn't know that the Pi zero W already has provisions for this kind of mod.
Shut up
@@sureshbhatt4287 hahahahahaha....
Nice video !
What is this stuff called? Because I love this stuff and would want to work on things like this. (I have seen people modify drones with this so they can "hack" other drones) I don't know what to search up and what the possibilities are for this stuff.
Hee Seytonic im new to this but could you setup a kit of a few pi zero's and add ons i wil need a sort of starter kit
Thank you. Is there a way to do this mod with the RPi 3B+, too?
Does anyone know where I can buy a case for my Pi Zero W that allows for a monitor?
What do you mean by "allows for a monitor"? Like something that doesn't cover up the HDMI port?
I was corrected, I assumed the ribbon cable connector on the W allowed you to connect a ribbon cable from a monitor. But I was told the ribbon cable connector; while the same type of connection, wouldn't work for a screen. It's only for the camera.
Does the network adaptor on the pi zero w support monitor mode or will you need a USB adaptor?
I may have a video on that coming soon.
that would be an awesome video
What's a ufl connecter
Dose it stand for ultra f##king long?
When you have some free time use it to work on your soldering skills.
Please do this for the Nodemcu! :)
Coto 1337
Can this wifi support packet inject, I think everyone was afraid to ask
still the same chipset, so I'd say no.
it can.
look up pi zero nexmon
also look up pwnagotchi. this guy here has a video on it actually
When is there gonna be a another giveaway?
10/10 IGN
1:05 ? 45 degrees? that would be slightly off :p still a nice video :)
davedarko How so?
-should be 90 degrees not 45 ;)-
ignore that, i was working from the wrong side of the resistor...
so no, I agree, about 45 degrees is right
will this work on pi 3?
Where can you find places to buy pi zero W's? Is there a similar site to whereismypizero.com for this model?
microcenter
Wow, you should never be allowed to solder ever again.
kinda defeat the purpose of the zero compactness...
I think if you will buy 3D printer and make videos from it, it will bring you more viewers and it will help you with some projects :D
Funny you mention that, I got one last week.
Am I fortune teller ? xD
more like cpt handsight
antenna cable is way too long
Slightly messy??
Just get some flux. Your life will be SO much easier
WTF are you soldering at 400 C, use good 60/40 Pb and Ti solder at 275-320 C... *Only novice use lead free solder*
use flux !
Wow, what a mess! hahaha
a very ugly soldering!