How good is WiFi in Raspberry Pi 5?

maxpowerr over 1 year ago

The new Raspberry Pi 5 again lacks an SMA connector for the WiFi antenna. In Raspberry Pi 4, when using an aluminum case with cooling, the signal dropped significantly.

Again you will probably have to scratch the board.

cstanton over 1 year ago

I also wish there was an SMA connector on the Raspberry Pi 5, unfortunately, there is not.

This image:

Is again how it is on the Pi 5, with no easy location to solder the SMA connector to, the jumper resistor is 'broken out' to what looks like a test pad and that is about it.
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wolfgangfriedrich over 1 year ago in reply to cstanton

Yes, that seems still the way to do it.

And on the RPi4 it was not only done by a random Youtuber, but also right here in the community.

(+) Molex Antenna Adventures starring a RPi4 - element14 Community
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cstanton over 1 year ago in reply to wolfgangfriedrich

An underrated blog post Deserving of re-posting in the blogs area of the Raspberry Pi group as "how to mod an antenna onto the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5"
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misaz over 1 year ago

I think the Wi-Fi is the weakest part of RPI 5. Wi-Fi did huge step forward in last years (ax, 6 Ghz, low power, embedded features, ...), but RPI is still vendor locked on Broadcom module which is not very performant and it is also limited by SDIO interface.
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scottiebabe over 1 year ago

Those pesky regulatory hurdles...
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wolfgangfriedrich over 1 year ago in reply to scottiebabe

So true.

If they used identical components and layout, they might even have skipped the WIFI/BT active radiated emissions testing and claimed compliance through the testing of the Rpi4 model.
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scottiebabe over 1 year ago in reply to wolfgangfriedrich

If they included a populated sma connector, they may have to include an antenna as well and demonstrate the end user wouldn't use a different antenna.
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kmikemoo over 1 year ago in reply to wolfgangfriedrich

Thanks for the reminder. The mod will be a whole lot easier to find here on e14.
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maxpowerr over 1 year ago in reply to wolfgangfriedrich

Good article, for some reason I didn’t come across it on E14 before.
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