[Modding] Homey Pro (Model Early 201x) Antenna modification

I do wonder how much you’ll be able to notice between “good quality” and “bad quality” pigtails of about 15cm long.

If i use my magical math-skills (which do not have :wink: )

15cm = ~0.5 foot (feet?)
so…
6db/15ft = 0.4db/ft
0.4db * 0.5 = 0.2db loss

i’m probably very wrong in this but it’s a funny thought experiment :wink:

oh, and i just ordered my antannea for the 433, zigbee and z-wave mod :slight_smile:

Thanks for all the info in this thread!

Your calculation is correct, iff the pigtail cable used has the same loss as the LMR100 cable that you’re comparing it to.

If, for the sake of argument, we assume that’s the case, then the difference between a cheap pigtail and an expensive pigtail won’t be nearly as large as between LMR100 and LMR400, for the simple reason that the latter has a much bigger diameter (and, thus, more shielding) than the former. Which isn’t the case for pigtails.

Nice detailed installation @Marcel_Visser, did you experiment with those new antennas?

This morning I installed the new antennas. First impression; it works a lot better!!

The delays are gone, and I also noticed that the homey app on my phone starts a lot faster. I think this has something to do with the WiFi antenna wich seems to be a lot better.

So my advice to anyone who is considering this mod: order antennas from good quality and not the ali express stuff… A good antenna is still not that expensive and works a lot better.

A dbi from 2 seems to work better than the 5 dbi antenna I used first. (but maybe a good quality 5 dbi antenna works good as well)

Disclaimer: Im using the new antennas just a couple of hours now, so, fingers crossed.

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And an update guys, with the new antennas homey is still rock solid for around 24 hours now without a reboot. I think thats a new record for my homey!

So I think I can say now that the MOD with the new antennas has worked for me!

But, but, but, only 24 hours now… So I’ve still my fingers crossed…

Here again the products I have used: the internal cables are really short, so I had to rotate the print 90 degrees. But that’s no problem! The shorter the better…

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Homey will also stay completely stable. My homey has been running for 6 months with this mod. Through antennea boosters he got a crazy range.

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Hmmm, too early…

Zigbee went down 2 hours a go… At least, the zigbee part.

Other people with the same experience? I have sent homey lot of bug reports but they have never found what was going on…

I did a soft reset and it is working again. Let’s see for how long…

Might have been a faulty antenna you got earlier because I have the exact same one and it has been working rock solid for about half a year now (I don’t even have to restart homey anymore intermittently). Every now and again a single sensor is lost and I have to re-add it but nothing like before. So, sorry to say but I doubt that it was due to the “quality” of the antenna. Let’s face it, if quality would be important then the standard antenna on the homey would not even cross a piece of paper one feet away :).

To get back to your current situation;
What do you mean by “zigbee went down”? What are the exact symptoms.

Maybe you’re right. I only can say that that the new antennas made a huge difference compared to the Ali express antennas I have tried…

What I mean with zigbee going down is that after some time the complete zigbee network does not respond anymore. All zigbee devices (innr and aqara) do nothing. After a restart, it works again…

After a restart of homey you mean? Honestly, that doesn’t sound like any kind of range issues to me. More of a deadlock/race condition in the zigbee stack. I personally do not have this behavior nor ever had it before the mod (I restarted homey back in the days to get all devices provide reliable output but never had all devices being unresponsive) so it has to be a certain device/app combination that triggers it.

What do you mean with “deadlock/race condition in the zigbee stack”?

Is there something wrong with my homey? Or is it just a zigbee device in my network that can be responsible for this behavior.

Well it could be either one of the two of course, i can only guess without logfiles.

Christmas ball arrived :slight_smile:

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Hey, great to hear that! How did you add the extra Antenna? I need more range specifically for the Mi Flora sensors.

br,
Tom

As stated few posts bellow, I didn’t do wifi antenna mod (only zwave and zigbee), so BT range, as it should share antenna with wifi, is unchanged.

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Great info here in this area! I am highly interested in extending the range of my homey - especially for the BT LE devices. Anyone here offering to mod my homey pro - I would for sure pay for it.
br, Tom

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Hey, which mod antenna did you use?

As per my post above, z-wave and zigbee.

So on my recent Homey PRO, being quite used to open an tweak things,

I tried to squeeze between the top dome and the plastic ring, not a chance i even lost a couple of cutter blades tops in it!
I tried everything, only achieved to damage a bit the plastic but no way to squeeze in, its completely shut

So i went for the bottom dome, here i achieved to squeeze a bit between, till the plastic center ring broke

for the moment the homey is still booting, and the ring is correctly illuminated i’m looking at what may not work anymore
But i lost all my chances to open it , and i’m left with unused antennas
(My 433 range was and will remain for ever at more or less 4meters )