little paddle-style wi-fi antennas for a CF28

I have these little wi-fi antennas which I was considering looking at trying to fit underneath the palmrests but it seems like a fairly annoying job to disassemble enough to install them there. Could they be fitted inside the LCD housing? Is the LCD housing's main cover actually cast magnesium or plastic? The other option is to go with a regular u.fl to rp-sma lead (as I mentioned in the thread about those cables) and have the RP-SMA connector mounted at the top-left of the LCD housing somehow to allow a simple screw-on wi-fi antenna setup.

The lead for the pair of wi-fi antennas is quite a long 760 mm (about 2'6") for each of the antennas and the two leads are secured together in some sections of heatshrink. If I did run them through the extra opening into the LCD housing I'd get some teflon tubing for the point where the pass from the main system housing into the LCD housing for protection of the cabling, and maybe use some easily-removable silicone to seal up the openings if I wanted to make them quite water-tight.



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Craig.

 

Not a good idea on the lcd housing Craig
All metal so the signal will be blocked unless you can fit somehow under the rubber bumpers

Alex

 

ah ok no prob then they'd need to be deployed under the palmrests either side of the touchpad somehow. The cabling is quite thin so it'll have higher loss than the nicer 3 mm diameter stuff, but being thin it'll be easier to find a way to route it.. Just need to figure out if the paddles can actually be located in a place in the main system unit where the metal casing won't block the signal.

BTW can the LCD housing cover be removed without affecting the actual operation of the LCD when the system is running?

Craig.

 

Craig,
Look for the pictures I posted. You only need one of the flags and trust me that's where to put it. There really is no room for a flag antenna under the right side cover, unless you have a rare one with no LAN and Modem. If you must put one on the LCD put a request up on the BST and buy one of the old RIM modem antennas and "tune" it for wi-fi as has been discussed extensively in the past. We have tried every way there is, you have to trim the flag too much to fit under the corner bumper, it will get a lousy signal, I've tried it.
You can take the cover off, but there is a lot of high voltage and magic smoke there to let out. This all has been really exhaustively gone through in the past.
CAP
In fact you seem to have been involved in this discussion the last time we had it: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=358363&page=2

 

Craig.... Um... How long have you been here counting today? I'd say you have some remedial reading to do... We've talked about this for years... Where they go.. How to do it, etc. LCD and palmrest will get you 0dB when you stand right beside your router....

 

Ignore the duct tape. The paddle antenna goes right there. I should have taken pictures when I put the sma jack up on the lid. But I think too many adult beverages may have been the reason I forgot.

 

Yeah just smack me round a bit...

I wasn't sure if the LCD housing was all magnesium as well as the main casing. Will try some more search queries to see what shows up.

Craig.

 

Thanks for the picture. Good for evaluating some ideas. I have a factory GPS engine under the battery at present and will soon replace it with something else. I'm trying to keep the 'bump' antenna housing to use for another active antenna (re my post in the 'CF28 aftermarket GPS' thread), and the other side already has a ether/modem combo and wi-fi card setup so that side's panel has RJ11 and RJ45 connectors but I might try locating an antenna on top of those connectors to see how well it'll fit.

Btw, I have unscrewed the back casing of the LCD housing and yes it's definitely metal! Not that I doubted anyone, I just wanted to confirm for myself. ALso I can see that the casing has little cast-in clips to hold a cable on the left side, but the right side isn't made to hold any sort of antenna though I'm sure enterprising people have rigged up a way to get an antenna fitted there. So definitely no way to use paddle/flag style antennas there, which was something I wanted to confirm or deny. Clearly it's 'deny'.

Craig.

 

I did this mod to my CF-28.

Mine had the Modem & Ethernet sockets in the side cover but I still managed to fit flag antennas in both side.

I don't have that machine any more, but as far as I can remember I put a loose fold or roll in it (parallel to the cable) to make it 'U' shaped, so part of the plain copper area was folded back underneath, holding the antenna part sprung up to the outside edge of the palmrest plastic.

The cards are designed to work with two antennas and you will get significantly better results if you get both working.

Robert.

 

That is the plan... Thanks for your insight. I wonder if these sort of antennas are sold with nice rg-174 cable instead of the cheap- coax that mine have? I wonder if the length of the cables (750 mm for each) will cause problems with loss, signal reflection, etc.

Craig.

 

Perhaps I recall wrongly but isn't that "Toughbook" label (behind the LCD) made of silver-colored plastic?? Think someone actually did place a paddle there.

 

Ok,, here is what I did.
Shorten the leads on your new flag type antennas to about 12 inches and route them from the mini pci cards to the plastic pieces on either side of the palm rests.
I found that you can fold one of the antennas and stick it on the inside of the plastic piece as in the first photo
The other antenna is shaped into a kinda U shape and placed into the open space above the circuit board on the plastic piece with the RJ11 and the RJ45 plugs as in the second photo.
Reception is almost as good as the factory antennas on my CF-29 and just as good as my daughter's CF-T2.

 

It was a GPS antenna I believe. And I was just about to chime in that is MAY be suitable for a paddle wifi, but you would have to remove the TB logo, drill a small hole, and feed the wire through leaving the paddle on the outside. Then seal the hole real good and replace the logo. What I don't know is how even being in contact with the magnesium cover would affect reception. That is a question for one of the veterans to answer. Personally, I wouldn't go this route. I trust the exhaustive work the vets have put in already and would just copy what they have already deemed suitable. Just my 2 cents.

 

i second what you've said. Something I have seen is that there are quite a few variants of these flag-style antennas, as they seem to differ depending what 'target' brand/model they're intended for. As well as the square-shaped ones like I have, there are some more oblong ones around too.

At present I don't have tools to shorten the cables (my good Weller soldering iron is over in Sydney!) but that just means sourcing some more tools here. I'll give the square ones a go today and look at trying out some different shaped ones, perhaps the more oblong-shaped ones would suit better and not require as much bending.

As for mounting a flag antenna behind the toughbook logo plate on the LCD housing lid, that's certainly a good idea I didn't think of. The metal lid could work well as a ground plane of sorts.

Craig.

 

As long as your router is in the direction that your laptop is facing. If not... It would act as a shield. A GPS antenna would be even MORE influenced by the ground plane effect!

There are obviously pros and cons to having the Toughbook made out of magnesium. The fun is in not only making it all work... But making it all work VERY WELL!

 

The common flag or paddle style antennas will not work if mounted flat against metal, you would need an antenna designed to mount on metal to work mounted on the lid.

Robert.