Hi All,
We just tried out mounting the base station on top of a telescopic pole, tied & clamped to a tandem kayak to control the Blue Boat, simulating survey in an estuary/mangrove canals.
The telescopic pole helped since we need to go under a low bridge.
The Blue Boat lost connection to the control station at a distance of ~ 30-40 meters from the kayak, the height of the pole was like in the picture above. Extending the pole added an additional height of ~ 40/50 cm and we can say that this increased the wireless range to ~ 40-50 meters.
Some ideas to improve this setup are to use:
- A longer telescopic pole, stiff yet light weight (probably a 3 meter selfie stick)
- Wifi 2.4 GHz extension cable with N-type connection. The base station box would sit on the deck of the kayak, running the extension cable along the pole and the antenna piece at the top of the pole.
Question: Would using a 9 dbi (instead of the 7 dbi that comes in package) or a higher dbi antenna helps?
At the end of the mangrove canals, where the river meets the sea, is a zone with high rise buildings… and in that area we experienced lost connection even when Blue Boat is only about 15-20 meters from the Base Station. We suspect that we experienced signal interference… so we still intend to integrate a 4G and telemetry connection also…