2.45GHz antennas, weatherproof, low cost?

Sounds like a customer to lose. Hopefully your name won't be associated with the product.

I generally use L-Com for outdoor wifi antennas.

If you troll dslreports and find the WISP posts, you can see what works and what doesn't.

Make that

It's a very good client. I designed some of the electronics but this is about an OEM part where it seems to be tough to get any decent quality at a reasonable price.

On the one we have the rubber stick holds up well under UV exposure. On the alternatives in the >

I have been through Internet searches, haven't found. I have seen som,e discussions on dslreport about outdoor routers and how to make your own antennas but not about low cost UV-resistant off-the-shelf rubber versions.

Joerg schrieb:

Hello,

rubber is a problem when exposed to intensive UV. Especially if the rubber is not black but white or red. Black rubber may hold well when it contains much black soot powder, but the resulting conductivity may be a problem with 2.45 GHz.

Bye

Why not get a rubber one with a good connector and put a piece of UV resistant heat shrink around it?

tm

Well, car tires out here in super-hot California easily last 10 year, even the fancy white-wall ones :-)

It wouldn't be much of a problem if they placed a secondary non-laced rubber ring or something wround the ground of the connector first. It also does not have to be rubber, just somewhat flexible. Flexible in a sense that it won't snap if someone accidentally bumps against it.

Water, bird poop, dust and other gunk would collect up top where the shrink tube ends, and the sun would still destroy that part. In many areas where this gets deployed the sun comes from straight above at times.

But the main obstacle is the added labor for this process.

These are my mobile broadband homies. They know.

Thanks, Dave. I have registered but must wait for the blessing of the administrator before I can post.

The rule of thumb for outdoor use is UV rated radome. It isn't cheap.

There is the right away and then there is cheap. It depends on your reputation. Some companies like the old HP never sold shit because your name is as good as your crappiest product. Other companies use branding to sell shit. Market the crap under one name and the good stuff under another.

I don't have the time to troll dslreports, but there are people on that WISP forum who make a living doing outdoor wifi. I settled on L-comm because it is what the installers use. At the time they were pointing out which panels were prone to leaking.

Nah. The car I drove in Europe (Audi) has a rubber antenna on the roof, never fazed by the sun. The car is now 26 years old and the current owner said it's still all fine.

All I need is an antenna like there is on my Audi, but for 2.45GHz instead of 88-108MHz. It works.

Leaking is under control. Right now it's the connectors that have gone bad (used to be ok).

The black color or additive isn't really UV proofing. What it does is prevent the UV rays from penetrating into the plasic. Under such conditions, only the surface of the part deteriorates very slowly, leaving the rest of the part intact.

First you want waterproof. Now you want UV embitterment proof. Anything else I need to know?

See if you can get them to make it with silicon rubber. See section on "Weatherability". You also get ozone resistance as part of the package. The commodity rubber ducky is polyurethane. However, I couldn't find anyone that makes rubber ducky antennas from silicone rubber, so that may be a dead end. You can get very good UV proofing by simply spray painting the radome with clear acrylic. The problem is that if you bend it, it will crumble. So that's not going to help.

Since you don't need to swivel, sliding a black (not white) fiberglass or acrylic tube over the rubber ducky should work. Same trick with the clear acrylic spray to make it UV proof. There will be some detuning, but I doubt that it will be significant. You could probably redesign the antenna yourself (using semi rigid coax) and a hard plastic cylinder for the radome. However, I couldn't build it for $5 delivered.

More photos of rubber ducky wi-fi antennas:

For your entertainment. A $99.00 rubber ducky 2dBi wi-fi antenna:

No, pretty much just what I mentioned in the first post, outdoors and UV-proof.

Thing is, we aren't quite high enough (yet) in quantities that custom parts make sense. I am looking for something off-the-shelf. We can't be the only ones with outdoor applications.

Well, one vendor makes them but their connector quality fell apart. Other than that they are ok.

Wonder what the profit margin on those is :-)

Some companies really know how to do this right. Our ChannelMaster TV antenna is well over 20 years old, sits in the glistening sun all day, yet none of the rigid and flexible plastic parts have deteriorated.