FriendlyELEC-Forum

Hi,

Just got a new M3 board and I was looking for the wifi antenna connection. In your main product page you can see it in the image and the description: http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?ro ... uct_id=130 there is no connector.

If you look at the wiki, http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_M3 there are some images where you can see the connector and come images where there is no connector. I have the one with no connector.

Just to be clear, is there a connector for an antena wifi in the M3 board?

Thanks,

Hi，
You should base on the wiki photo，and the M3 integrated on-board ceramic antenna，you can use directly. Now the latest version of the M3 is as wiki.

Thanks for the info!

jjm wrote:
the M3 integrated on-board ceramic antenna，you can use directly.

Is this a joke? Realized it now that there's no connector for an IPX antenna any more. The ceramic antenna requires moving the M3 2-5 m next to the AP to get a stable connection and any throughput that is worth the name (even with WiFi powermanagement turned off).

Do you plan to fix this mistake and add an IPX connector with next M3 batch again?

tkaiser wrote:

jjm wrote:
the M3 integrated on-board ceramic antenna，you can use directly.

Is this a joke? Realized it now that there's no connector for an IPX antenna any more. The ceramic antenna requires moving the M3 2-5 m next to the AP to get a stable connection and any throughput that is worth the name (even with WiFi powermanagement turned off).

Do you plan to fix this mistake and add an IPX connector with next M3 batch again?

Hi,
Could you ues the iperf tool to test network signal?

jjm wrote:
Could you ues the iperf tool to test network signal?

I prefer iperf3 for obvious reasons but anyway:

Test against a Linux connected with GbE to AP/router. Position of both NanoPi exactly identical. NanoPi M3 has to use the onboard thingie, NanoPi Air uses the ultra cheap antenna Xunlong sends out with every WiFi capable Orange Pi. I used the one from $7 OPi Zero: https://aliexpress.com/store/product/Ne ... 74493.html

NanoPi M3 with your Debian image, board orientation so that it might get best connection to AP (8 m away, 2 walls in between):

http://pastebin.com/eMKmW3jG

NanoPi Air running with Armbian (I did the port a few weeks ago):

http://pastebin.com/SUEW98T0

Please see signal strength and count of detected SSIDs in 'nmcli dev wifi list' output and also the horribly low throughput numbers. WiFi chips are the same, kernel is a crappy 3.4 Android one, the antenna makes the difference. In case you expect software to be responsible you find Armbian image for the Air at the usual location: https://www.armbian.com/download/ (please keep in mind that it's almost 2017 and when you want to connect to a WiFi then with Armbian simply issue 'sudo nmtui' -- no need to fiddle around in static config files)

On a related note: Do you have anyone at your facility able to answer this question: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=404

BTW: Since I spotted NanoPi M1 Plus a while ago we added the board already to Armbian: https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib/com ... bd4fedbac8 (no pre-built image but using our build system a Wheezy, Jessie, Trusty or Xenial image can be created easily).

Just in case you plan to use there such a ceramic antenna to: Please overthink this, add an IPX connector and ship with a cheap antenna.

We had already several complaints in Armbian forum WiFi wouldn't work with NanoPi Air but it's just that FA is not shipping with an aerial for whatever reasons. See also: http://tech.scargill.net/size-matters-n ... ment-26956

Please reconsider this for all your WiFi boards:

- add an IPX header where it has been saved (M3)
- disable WiFi powermanagement by default
- bundle a cheap antenna with every device sent out

Happy to report that my NanoPi M3 arrived with the connector and antenna in the box (board rev 1610). Thanks to Oscar and Tkaiser for raising the issue and to FriendlyElec for listening.