Comment by jubilanti
12 hours ago
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.
Yeah, western parts are expensive.
https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C47117600.html
Here's a capable switch for $0.07.
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.