If it helps I am merely a few feet away from my Unifi AP’s in my home so the wireless signal should be really strong. It sees the wifi networks but after a period of time the wifi just stops working, and I do notice the back is quite warm as well.
So I have some improved thermal pads coming as well as kapton tape. But I was wondering is there anything else I should be trying to do? I am planning on adding a 4G cell modem in this laptop so I want to avoid installing another wifi card in this if possible.
I would like to be able to move away from the ethernet cable at my desk as I am planning to take this regularly for my own tinkering and work needs on the go hopefully as soon as end of next week when I replace the batteries that were also having an issue.
For your information, for my iMX8M+ Pocket Reform with LTE card, extra thermal pads and avoiding display cable from covering Wi-Fi antenna have stabilized my Wi-Fi connection to my UniFi APs. I am pretty pleased with current Wi-Fi stability and LTE capability.
Oh cool so we have the same path to upgrade and just waiting on the RK3588. I am also am looking at upgrading the lid to aluminum and looking at PCBWay to do that.
Would you happen to have some pictures how to best avoid the display cable because that has been really annoying.
Also where did you get those LTE antennas? They look quite nice!
I do not think solid metal lid will do well with LTE connections. Wi-Fi antenna is placed next to a non-metal window, but if lid is solid metal then these adhesive LTE antennae will be completely surrounded practically by metal objects inside.
Thanks for making me aware of this. I’ll keep that in mind as I work further into this @SpaceLizard . I’m waiting for hear back from PCBWay as they had reached out a few weeks earlier to want to possibly collaborate on some projects as I create cybersecurity and tech content, so I will make sure to better work with them to ensure the fit is as required and be sure to give any feedback if necessary to anyone to improve the process.
I was planning on putting the antennas behind the plastic screen bezel as I noticed some good gaps I could hide it in that probably won’t be effected by the metal plate. I may also reposition the WiFi antenna there if it impedes my signal too much. I’ll know more in the coming weeks.
Just an update the laptop is still dropping wifi constantly after rerouting the antenna and taping down the display connector, and adding a thermal pad to the wifi and power side of the iMX8M plus as some had suggested, and I even replaced all three thermal pads to ensure that wasn’t the issue. I am still waiting on PCB Way to send the new aluminum backplate to possibly eliminate all the thermal issues. I’m doing some updates on ethernet and hope maybe that helps but I am doubtful.
I believe @minute is working on a new backplate that doesn’t have a full plane of copper that the current one unintentionally has, which apparently is the cause of the bad signal.
Aluminium can work a bit better though, for the time being.
Ok then I will wait for PCB Way to send my new aluminum backplate that they are machining and laser engraving. For the time being I managed to at least fix the battery issues I was having and replaced both of the battery packs with some I got off ebay. So I am rocking 100% but tethered to Ethernet for the time being but may installed the cell phone modem this week to get some kind of freedom
