Meshtastic (LORA) range test : Dipole antenna vs out-of-factory antenna

hello and welcome to this new video so today we did a range test to compare two MTI devices both of them actually are ltech V3 boards but one of them is using the so-called PCB antenna which comes out of factory with the board actually it does not come with the ltech V3 board it comes with the rack Wireless board so it's it's a good quality antenna although it's a small PCB antenna out of factory so that's the first device we tested the second one is also an ltech V3 board but this time using the dipole antenna that we built in the previous video so we expect of course much longer range with this dipole antenna in comparison with the small PCB antenna so what was the test setup so the test setup is a rack Wireless board which is installed in my attic inside the house we are in a urban environment so this home basee stays inside for the range test so obviously it's not ideal it should be better outside and as high as possible so then what we did we took a bike and we drove around in the city as far as we could starting with a small PCB antenna and to see how far it went then when this lost range we switched to the dipole antenna and went further ahead so we will now discover the video of the test uh itself and we'll come back afterwards for the conclusion so for this test we'll use a bike and we'll obviously use the mesh tastic app so we will be testing first the PCB antenna this second device will be turned off obviously to avoid Communications between the two and we will just test the communication between each of these two devices and a base station the base station also uses the same dipole and antenna so let's see how far we go so we are located 260 M away as can be shown on the screen here on the bike and we will test with a message let's send a test message and see it is if it is received by the base station yeah no problem obviously at 260 M with a PCB and okay so we are now at a little bit more than 500 M and we'll test another message [Music] yes and now has expected 500 m is no problem so we'll go a little bit further so we are now at 640 M and the message is still going through the radio channel of that little PCB antenna so let's go further I have also to notice that we are more or less behind the hill so we don't have direct line of sight but still the signal goes through which is quite amazing actually so we are now at 766 M and out of three messages two went through so we see that signal as some trouble now to go through but again we are behind the hill we are not in direct line of sight but still two out of three messages went through so guys this is quite amazing we are at 866 m at the other side of the hill at the bottom of the hill and Signal goes through so at more or less 900 M by checking the signal strength we see a RSSI at minus 128 and a signal noise ratio of - 19.3 at 900 M and test messages go through without any problem still on that little PCB antenna so here is a view of the hill at the bottom some of which I did the 900 m test and we will ride the bike uphill again on that other side to go further so we continue to ride the bike to extend the test to a further distance we are going now back uphill so but we are still in an urban environment with buildings and again we are not in the line of sight of course here we go up again so it's going to ease the connection probably we'll see so we will stop here for a new test so now we are still testing with the little PCB antenna and it is incredible it still goes through at a distance of 969 M and as you can see we are on a street with buildings trees and we have a hill between the base station and this little guy so we are not in direct line of sight of course weather is fine it's not raining so signal goes through the atmosphere without too much restrictions it's not raining at least and we still have a successful test message I will send another one to be sure and does it go through let's see let's wait it goes through so still with the little PCB antenna just not very high up it's just sitting on the bike so it is that little rack Wireless PCB antenna which comes with the rack Wireless boards but I used it on an ltech V3 board in that case so I guess we'll have to go further again so let's take the bike and ride further all right so we are at 1.2 km from the base station still testing the little PCB antenna let's check what it does so here the screen with a PCB antenna at 1.2 km testing a message doesn't go through let's try a second one still with a little PCB antenna so still testing at 1.2 km away the second message first one failed let's see if the second one goes through no I have the feeling that we are out of range now with the PCB antenna then it will be time to test the second device with the dipole antenna let's test again the third message no third message doesn't go through and last one just to be sure we are at 1.2 km here on the map fourth message will it go through nope so 1.2 km exceeds then the range of the little Factory PCB antenna so let's um now test the second device with the dipole antenna which should go further so let's turn on that second device booting up the dipole antenna as we've shown in a previous video and we are still at the same place as the last range test of the first device with a PCB antenna okay so the dipole device initialized and it is now connecting correctly at 1.2 km with successful test messages so let's go further with the bike so at 1.5 km messages go through with the device and the dipole antenna I will show on screen the screenshot of the smartphone to have a camera r view it is incredible so we'll ride further with the bike to show the environment in which we are doing the range test we are talking about concrete buildings trees Hills so we are now at 1.8 km from the home base and Signal goes through without any problem quite a powerful dipole antenna this is the test bike let's go so now to go further I'm forced to go down a hill again so that would be the second Hill between me and the base [Music] station that's the top of the hill back there at 1.8 km where the test was successful so now I'm going down obviously that's not going to be good for the signal but we shall see incredible at 2 km messages go through no problem and I show the screen capture on screen simultaneously great so let's go let's continue it's getting now quite difficult to go further away without going into the forest I want to stay in the city so now I'm going down a street which is on a hill so that would be the third Hill blocking the line of sight between me and the home base that's the environment around me small houses but going downhill so we'll make a test at the bottom of the hill over there so as expected at 2.1 km at the bottom of that Hill as I show you here that's the third Hill between me and the home base with quite a lot of buildings obviously in between the signal does not go through at 2.1 kilm so I think we are more or less at the at the limit of the range but I will try to go up still keeping the same distance to see if going up more at the same distance would allow to transmit messages I am now located in small streets Canyon like streets with very narrow streets buildings buildings iron fences and the signal goes through 1.5 km in that environment but I had to come back close enough so basically in these types of streets kind of narrow with concrete buildings on both sides the signal and also Hills between me and the home base we are absolutely not in line of sight we have a few Hills in between with high points low points so the furest distance I get with the dipole is 1.5 k M and the furthest was 2 km so that's pretty good considering the obstacles of in front of the radio waves we are back for the conclusion of the test range what have we observed we have observed that actually the small PCB antenna is quite surprising although it's an autof factory antenna so we could expect a very low quality it actually works very well especially in an urban environment we've made a test up to 1 kilomet away so that's a little bit more than half a mile knowing that we had a hill and we didn't have any line of sight between the home base and this device so that's quite impressive further using the dipole antenna we doubled the range so we went up to a little bit more than two kilometers away um and this was even with two hills in between the device and the home base so we have two Hills lots of concrete buildings lots of buildings and streets in between the device and the home base so obviously the test range is dependent on your environment uh we saw that uh with all the environment that we tested the range of the dipole antenna went from one actually from 1.5 in the harshest environment up to 2 kilometers in an urban environment again without line of sight and with heels in between the device and the home base it is incredibly impressive I'm amazed how far this little device can communicate so there you go basically a homemade dipole antenna doubles the range for a given environment in comparison with an autof factory antenna and that would be probably even a better Improvement if we had compared with the typical ltech three antennas that come with the boards which are even worse than these rack Wireless PCB antennas so basically what you have to understand is that to increase the range rather than increase the power start first by improving your antenna both on the receiving side and the emitting site that's it that's the conclusion of this video and we'll see you in the next one thank you bye-bye

Channel: Powered Meshtastic Europe

Views: 7,627

Keywords: Meshtastic, LORA, LORAWAN, Antenna range, RAK Wireless, Heltec, LORAWan, Heltec V3, RAKwireless, Range test, Dipole antenna, PCB antenna

Id: tDp15O93xRY

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 11 2024