So a little quick review - I decided on an external antenna because my cMP being directly under my desk had poor connections to my Trackpad & Keyboard (the Aluminium Apple Bluetooth ones that use 2xAA rechargables). The keyboard was especially bad, as it was often sitting on top of a big A3 Wacom tablet, which is effectively a giant RF shield.
I bought the antenna extender figuring getting an antenna up above the desk, with line of sight to my peripherals was the solution.
Connction-wise, it came with instructions presuming you could connect it directly to the BT card's port, but I recalled that when I first upgraded the WIFI/BT, getting those connectors on was a super hassle, so instead, I connected it to the end of the BT extension cable that originally plugged in to the cable going to the built-in antenna.
I put the antenna out slot cover in slot 2, figuring I wasn't installing anything directly above my RX580 for clearance reasons, and then the 3m extension to the external aerial.
This is where I discovered a problem - the antenna is REALLY finicky about position and angle. Where my Beats Flex earbuds can work in the back yard while my iPhone is on my desk - through walls, and between floors of my home, the external antenna would drop from 80 to 40% signal strength, just by tilting it 30 degrees.
Eventually I found a solution, mounting it with doublesided tape, upside-down to a mirror that's behind my centre monitor. It points down a few inches below the screen's bottom edge, has line-of-sight to both peripherals, and keeps a stable 100% signal strength.
So yeah, it's a solution. It's not a super-elegant solution in my case, but it's effective.
*edit*
Update: while it appeared to work with the aerial as in the picture, the more testing I did, the worse the trackpad (at right) seemed to be. After a lot of trying to figure the problem, I eventually resorted to having the aerial just standing on my dask off to the right of my rightmost monitor.
My working theory, is that the keyboard has it's radio transparent cutout on the bottom of the curved tube for the batteries, whereas the trackpad would appear to be radio transparent through it's input surface. This means that as per the photo, the aerial was low enough for the keyboard, but was too low for the trackpad, which is angled away from it as well. With it standing on a little riser so the full aerial has line of sight to the input surface of he trackpad, and angular coverage to the height of the radio hole on the keyboard, they're both on full 10% stable connection strength. So a little less elegant, overall, but perfectly effective.
I bought the antenna extender figuring getting an antenna up above the desk, with line of sight to my peripherals was the solution.
Connction-wise, it came with instructions presuming you could connect it directly to the BT card's port, but I recalled that when I first upgraded the WIFI/BT, getting those connectors on was a super hassle, so instead, I connected it to the end of the BT extension cable that originally plugged in to the cable going to the built-in antenna.
I put the antenna out slot cover in slot 2, figuring I wasn't installing anything directly above my RX580 for clearance reasons, and then the 3m extension to the external aerial.
This is where I discovered a problem - the antenna is REALLY finicky about position and angle. Where my Beats Flex earbuds can work in the back yard while my iPhone is on my desk - through walls, and between floors of my home, the external antenna would drop from 80 to 40% signal strength, just by tilting it 30 degrees.
Eventually I found a solution, mounting it with doublesided tape, upside-down to a mirror that's behind my centre monitor. It points down a few inches below the screen's bottom edge, has line-of-sight to both peripherals, and keeps a stable 100% signal strength.
So yeah, it's a solution. It's not a super-elegant solution in my case, but it's effective.
*edit*
Update: while it appeared to work with the aerial as in the picture, the more testing I did, the worse the trackpad (at right) seemed to be. After a lot of trying to figure the problem, I eventually resorted to having the aerial just standing on my dask off to the right of my rightmost monitor.
My working theory, is that the keyboard has it's radio transparent cutout on the bottom of the curved tube for the batteries, whereas the trackpad would appear to be radio transparent through it's input surface. This means that as per the photo, the aerial was low enough for the keyboard, but was too low for the trackpad, which is angled away from it as well. With it standing on a little riser so the full aerial has line of sight to the input surface of he trackpad, and angular coverage to the height of the radio hole on the keyboard, they're both on full 10% stable connection strength. So a little less elegant, overall, but perfectly effective.
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