Hi All,
Jumping in here late, but have read most of this thread. I deal with installing WiFi commercially.
A repeater always has two antennas, because it has two transmitters. One is treated as the master source that is being repeated. The other is the slave. The vision camera uses 2.4GHz. One of the Visions repeater transmitters is reserved as the master and it only accepts a link to the PV's camera. Hence the magic scan code on the outside of the box to inform the repeater master of the hidden SSID coming from the camera which is all that it will repeat; it will ignore traffic from any other WiFi in the area.
In our case, the slave side is intended to broadcast to your phone or whatever other visual and control display you are using. It's SSID is NOT hidden and you see it and choose it to link your phone to the repeater slave transmitter.
Both those antennas are crappy, but that is not important on the slave side since it is expected that the phone will be within a short distance, a few feet. Having that crappy antenna on the master side talking to a PV camera perhaps a mile away is ridiculous. Improving the antenna talking to the camera is a giant step, since it not only strengthens by focusing the transmitted signal to the PV camera, but captures much more of the weak signal coming OUT of the camera.
I do not know which of the two antennas in the repeater is the master talking to the PV and which is the slave talking to the phone. Uncle Fester made knowing that moot when he hooked up two antennas, one to each, guaranteeing success on the first try. Fester used a 14 dBi antenna (model 2414), which has a stronger but narrower beam pattern. The same company makes a model ending in 2409, which is a 9dBi model that is smaller, lighter, and covers a broader beam pattern without quite the reach of the 14dBi model. Both should be good, but the 14 will have better absolute reach in the center of the beam pattern. The datasheets on the TL Link website show the beam patterns for both models.
In addition to the improved antenna, we can potentially significantly improve the strength of the signal going into that antenna. I say potentially since we don't know how much signal is coming out of the repeater transmitter, but with that little 3.7v battery, it can't be much. Using an inline amplifier e.g.
http://dx.com/p/sunhans-sh-2000-2-4...dband-amplifier-signal-booster-silver-214735? you can boost the signal to a full watt (1000 mw) or more depending on the model. The amplifier is just a straight through, inline, connection between the repeater and the antenna. The amplifier has its own wall wart power supply (here 9-12v) that supplies the extra power and could come from a battery.
The same principles apply to the completely independent 5.8GHz flight controller connection. Replace the little rubber duck antenna with a similar rig (this antenna needs to be a 5.8GHz model) to what you are using for the camera and your flight control range goes up significantly. You can get a 5.8Hz amplifier for this also if needed. The only reason it works somewhat further now is that the 5.8GHz band has nowhere near as much noise traffic flying around and the rubber duck is much better than the the teeny 1" patch in the camera repeater. (There is only one receiver channel in the P2V for control, the two antenna wires are there just so you can set them 90 degrees apart to keep from having really bad dead zones.)
My 2 cents
Jim
