BR1 - Glove Box Install, Great antennas, and 6.2 beta 2 Testing

I just overhauled my BR1 installation, and am in love with the results. Here are a few details on what I did.

Old Setup - BR1 was in my trunk with 2 x Wilson Magnetic whip antennas mounted on the roof. These had 10’ cord which I ran down into the trunk. The antennas were ugly, but the cords were actually concealed quite nicely. The antennas were spaced at 1/2 wavelength for LTE band 13 (~20cm). I had two major complaints with this setup: 1) I generally got better service on my iPhone when in marginal areas 2) If I fell back to 3g, I rarely would recover back to LTE

New setup - I relocated the BR1 to my glove box. This was mainly to accommodate some new antennas with a short lead, only about 9 inches. I wanted this to resolve the signal in marginal areas problem. I also wanted to get the ugly rabbit ears off of my car’s roof! I also loaded the new beta firmware 6.2 beta 2.

Result - Since doing all of this last week, I have driven over 1,000 miles across my very rural home state of North Dakota. I have experienced exactly zero WAN disconnections, excellent throughput, and very good 3g/4g switching (though it very rarely ever looses 4g now). In addition to the usual music streaming while I was driving, I also spent three hours in the back seat while my wife drove, using my corporate VPN with absolutely no disconnects, failed page loads, or even the slightest hint of slowness. Surely much of this result is due to the good antennas with low cable loss, but I also believe the new 6.2 beta 2 is yielding great results.

Details - Here are the antennas I used, they are made by taoglas and I purchased them from Digi-key for $20/ea. I have one vertical, along my windshield frame, and one horizontal across my dash. I also have the GPS antenna in between the two. I left a standard wifi antenna directly attached in the glove box - I don’t want to maintain a connection as I walk away from my car.


2 Likes

Hi Travis - Great feedback! Thanks for sharing.

Mike - Frontier Computer Corp.