Comment by jacquesm
12 hours ago
I'm using the 2 W for a project and one thing I would love is for a better wifi antenna, the one that's on the 2 just isn't good enough. You can hack it though, there is a spot on the board where you can solder on a connector, cut a single trace and you're good to go. But it would be great if it would do better out of the box.
Amazingly powerful hardware for the price these little things.
I wouldn't hold out hope for an easier out of the box wifi antenna. If you want a U.FL antenna for the built-in wifi, there has to be a physical switch (cost, fragility) or a built-in antenna connected to U.FL you can replace (same issues) or the same cut and solder pattern for wifi antennas across chips like ESPs, nRFs, and others.
Just use a USB adapter with a decent antenna.
> there has to be a physical switch
Or literally any $1-3 SPDT RF switch? >80% of which are directly optimized and advertised for wifi and bluetooth?
For a Zero, that’s a big BoM item given this would be used by relatively few people.
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There are RF connectors by Hirose which are bypassable due to a built-in switch, but I don't think pigtails with them are common.
Yeah I find the Pi's of that era have pretty poor wifi reception, has been a constant source of uncertainty when I run things on them sadly