Instructions about antennae

[ajlennon]

I think it would help me, and therefore I suspect lots of other people, if we had some information about sourcing antennae.

e.g.

• what you can expect if you don't have one (damage?)
• different types
• connector types with pics
• how to cut up a bit of wire to the right length and solder it on
• whether to use the coil versions
• differences between "whip" antennae and the other ones
• maybe something on PCB antennas
• expectations on prices from UK/China

[originalfoo]

Is this specifically for Pycom boards or in general?

Also, some things I'd add to your bullet list:

• How to prevent end-users from attaching wrong external antenna (eg. a LoPy antenna and WiFi antenna seem to have the same connector)
• Is it possible to detect wrong antenna type?
• How to detect when an external antenna is attached and use it instead of an internal antenna.
• Internal vs. external antenna - when should I use one vs. the other?
• Examples of open source projects that use PCB track antennas (RuuviTag is a great example)
• How to determine communications range for different antenna strategies
• Note on IP67 (well, the standard in general) for outdoor devices; something like this

BTW, here's some good sources of IoT antennas:

• http://www.antenova-m2m.com/products/
• http://www.proant.se/en/catalogue.htm - LoRa for example