<div dir="ltr">Sorry if this is not directly relevant to Battlemesh. Sharing, since I think some list members are playing around with modded TP-Link devices like the TL-MR3020 and TL-WR703N.<br><div><br>I've found, at least for the MR3020, that the popular instructions for an external antenna posted <a href="https://apollo.open-resource.org/lab:argus#modifications" target="_blank">online here</a> seem to leave the device badly vulnerable to ESD damage during thunderstorms. Two MR3020's I'd modded this way (i.e. with a 0ohm resistor de-popped and the pigtail attached to an exposed pad) appear to lose ~ 50% of their transmit power after a lighting storm passed over. That is, two MR3020's with the same mod and same 7dB dipole, two lightning storms on different occasions, and both times the node's transmitter power drops substantially at some point during the storm. In each instance, the MR3020 was indoors but close to an exterior window.<br>
<div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><div>
<br>Since the <a href="http://blagg.tadkom.net/2012/09/15/better-wr703n-antenna-mod/" target="_blank">instructions for modding the WR703N</a> for an external antenna are basically the same, I'm guessing this would also make that device similarly vulnerable.<br>
<br></div><div>My initial hunch that the advertised approach of de-popping a 0ohm resistor for the antenna pigtail is bad, because it's removing a filter capacitor used for blocking DC (or other unwanted transients) from being coupled from the antenna back into the Atheros chipset. I'm going to try severing the trace leading to the onboard patch antenna on an undamaged WR703N and solder the pigtail there, as that will at least preserve the filter caps TP-Link designed in (at the expense of impedance mismatch).<br>
</div><div><br></div></div></div>-- <br>Ben West<div><a href="http://gowasabi.net" target="_blank">http://gowasabi.net</a><br><a href="mailto:ben@gowasabi.net" target="_blank">ben@gowasabi.net</a><br>314-246-9434<br></div>
</div></div>