There was another thread I was bombing about this so figured I would start my own.
So, the Hue Bridge maintains fantastic connectivity via magic with it's in built antenna. What I've found is that the PCB has two trace antenna built directly in. One is for Zigbee and the other is for the WiFi chipset that's disabled.
I think that the SANT1 port is the Zigbee one, but I'm trying to find out for sure. The biggest limitation to the whole experiment is that I can't find anything that lets you get at the Zigbee network/child information like link quality.
My initial thought was to just wrap the hub in aluminum (aluminium) foil to the point that it stops talking to the bulbs in my office. I'm at 25 layers and it's still toggling them no problem. I think I'll try killing power to all the bulbs except one on the other side of the house to see if it still works without repeaters in between.
My first thought was "why" given how reliable (and full of repeaters/routers, given that the #1 usage is bulbs and lightstrips that all are) the system is, but I see you came from a thread about rack-mounting, so it makes sense now.
Continuing from there:
There may be something, but I'm not aware of anything. The API has a generic "connectivity status"-type attribute for each device, but it only reports status like "connected" or "disconnected" and nothing I remember about LQI or other objective measurements.
Yes...that is the use case, but after 25 wraps of foil...I'm wondering if it even matters. I suppose some additional testing will tell. The below link is what confirmed that this should work but I don't know that there was any validation besides hooking up the antenna and making sure everything still works.
With the bridge still wrapped in the foil, I shut power off to all the bulbs except two on the other end of the house. They still worked just fine. All that to say, it'd probably be fine shoving one into a network rack/enclosure.
If only I could get it in the microwave with the door shut...
So simple to add antennas to.. No do you have a Lutron pro 2 bridge for dissection?(Having a bit of an issue with pico's in the basement even though I have a repeater nearby)
Correct, but like I mentioned above, there's no way to tell if the antenna is actually working. I'm hoping there's a log or some other file that will provide connection stats so I can do a before/after with an external antenna.
The Lutein hub is too much for me to grab and tear a part since I don't have a use-cases for one. If I used Lutein stuff, I definitely would.
yep, that's the gotcha... typically a trace has to be cut on the PCB, and another one bridged to force the use of a different antenna... OR ...sometimes there is a digital switch that can force the use of an external antenna vs the internal. For example, the Raspberry Pi CM4 module has this functionality designed in.
