this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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I have mixed feelings about these 1W modules. They must be handy in small setups with compact antennas, however, building the mesh despite the strict limits and TX power is half the fun. When it turns into a screaming match, there is no way back.
Btw. what is the second antenna connector for?
In the GTA (Canada) we have a shit ton of nodes but due to the environment it's very hard to get far before you run out of hops. This node allows many nodes in a 15km radius to talk to each other or bounce to downtown with 1 hop. It's elevated on a balcony. Also this module has much more sensitive receive stage so the increase in signal strenght is similar in both rx and tx.
The second connector is an unused SMA. That said I was planning to do a 2-node setup with low and high gain antennas, on the opposite ends of the box. ๐คญ Fortunately this 5dBi antenna performs well enough for near nodes to not need a low gain supplementation.
For those outside the trannasphere, this is the Greater Toronto Area, a bunch of towns clustered in the center-east of the country. Think of it like greater London or the cluster near Hong Kong.
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You guys might be interested in the fact that in the 2.7.15 firmware they have the ability so that you can set routers as favorites and each router that sets each other router as a favorite becomes one single hop. So all of the backbone transit from router to router is considered a single hop, and the only time hops will be consumed is at the end points.
Oh yes, I recently learned about that feature but there isn't an obvious backbone to be formed yet. We'll probably employ this in the future with well positioned nodes.