I’m building a media player (to alert me of equipment faults mainly, quite critical that it is reliable), while developing I’ve noticed that from my workstation (maybe 5 meters from the access point) the ESP32 struggles and doesn’t always play the voice generated with piper.
If I move it near the access point (maybe 1 meter) it works 100% of the time.
I’ve noticed the same thing with a ESP32-CAM for another project.
Any trips and tricks to improve the range?
To be clear: these are the only devices in my home (a fairly small European apartment) that struggle with WiFi reception. The access point is a TP-Link WiFi 6.
Look for a 0ohm resistor that needs to be removed or diverted. Looks something like this. You need to be sure about your soldering. You can buy boards with IPEX as only connection. Bit smaller too as don’t have antenna PCB attached.
You would have to search for the data sheet of your particular board.
Also as Karosm said there are bad usb connections. Search the forum for the thread on poor wifi on esp32s.
If you still don’t get 5 meters, I would investigate router settings and 2.4G channels occupancy.
If you really need that external antenna, which I don’t believe, you can try:
I have struggled with poor esp32 connections myself for a long time and I have found you have 3 options:
Move the board: Move a bad performing board closer to an access point or to a location with less interference with other devices that use the same (presumably 2.4GHz) band such as other wifi devices, microwave oven or zigbee devices.
Install an external antenna: This isn’t always possible (see earlier answers), but this helps a lot. Most boards that allow connection of an external antenna require some soldering which is hard for a beginner.
Switch boards: Antenna design is an art, and a lot of (often low cost) boards have really bad reception. And the “classic” esp32-cam is an excellent example of this. So just switching to different boards can help a lot, even if it still has an onboard antenna.
I found some time this week to disassemble an old router and savage the antennas. The result is excellent, easily the best reception I’ve experienced on any microcontroller WiFi
P.S. just to give some context, the project is “connecting” to HA a pellet stove, using the IR remote to send commends and the camera to check the LCD screen remotely.
