I’ve placed an Ecolink Tilt sensor in my mailbox, which is shielding the signal quite well. For 900 Mhz, I think I need a 12 inch antenna? or fraction of. Any hardware guys recognize where to attach antenna to this board?
Thanks.
It might be easier to put the device in a waterproof plastic box outside the mailbox and extend the tilt switch (brass can component) inside on a single pair cable. You don’t even have to use the same type of switch. You could use a micro switch or magnetic reed switch. Whatever works best. There appear to be pads along the left side of the pcb you can use if you leave the tilt switch in place (but not tilted / contacts closed).
If you do want to try extending the antenna, it depends if it is a balanced or unbalanced connection to the transmitter. The shiny wire between p6 and p7 is the antenna. Is the p7 end of that floating (not connected to anything)?
If so, remove the shiny wire and connect the centre conductor of some RG178 coax to p6, connect the coax shield to ground/battery negative as close as possible to p6. Like really close. 5mm away at most.
Fit any 900MHz antenna to the other end of the coax (keep the coax length as short as possible) . Or expose about 79mm of the coax centre conductor above a ground plane at least 180mm in diameter.
If p7 is connected to something, go with remote locating the switch.
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Thanks so much. I learned alot from your post. Had to lookup ground plane. I think I’ll go with remote location and maybe a reed switch. I shorted the contacts for SW1 and that works well. Those holes for the SW1 contacts look really neat. Is there a connector that fits nicely in them because my soldering skills aren’t the best? Thanks.