Hi everyone. I am very new to this so please bare with me. I am needing to control a series of air operated valves on a metal structure from a distance of up to 300ft. I purchased and evaluated the
8 channel key fob remote R830PL_KEYFOB relay board but I am having signal irregularities from about the 20 ft. range and out. Although the system is outside on open land, I think the inconsistent reception it is mostly due to the metal structure it is mounted to. We were able to overcome this by placing an antenna 10 ft. away and 6 ft. in the air, but I am trying to avoid this. Others have had great success with the Xbee Pro in this situation. I was looking at the MirCR8x0_KIT witch would work perfect but the transmitter is powered by 12 volt so it would not lend itself to any battery powered handheld enclosure. Any Ideas?
Hi welcome to the community,
That amount of range is very irregular. Line of sight on the key fobs should achieve 750-1000 feet depending on the fob.
A few things you can check:
Make sure that the antenna is fully seated on the RP-SMA connector. Make sure that the mounting nut is seated at the back of the connector, push it all the way through the enclosure and screw on the antenna by hand until it doesn’t seat any more securely.
Another thing you might check is that the ground (copper metal where the antenna connects) of the antenna RP-SMA connector isn’t in direct contact with a conductive material. I usually recommend a gasket or heat shrink tubing when mounting the antenna to a metal enclosure.
As far as other solutions, unfortunately we aren’t aware of a hand-held digi transmitter although that would be really cool.
Also more on the ground of the antenna. I have seen this damage communication modules before if the conductive enclosure has a ground differential with the board.