i am in the process of adding an antenna to the transmitter of the gadget inf. cactus v2 system. my question is: should a new antenna also be installed on the receiver to improve reliability/communication? i assume the antenna on the receiver is similar to the transmitter (tinned hole in the board connected to a run or is it the copper bus bar?). let me know if any of you have done this. if i have to be the guinnea pig, thats cool. just trying to save some time.
Shawn use a 433mhz antenna on this and it should work great on the transmitter, I don't think you will need one on the receiver unless you just want to try it.
Ron
thanks ron. i already installed the antenna on the tx. i have 2 receivers so i added 6.5" wire and stuffed it inside one of the rx. i will test it tonight to see what happens. i will also test it with the wire outside of the enclosure to see if there is a difference. should be fun.
i will post photos later, when i get home to my camera. i used a cordless phone antenna for the tx. freq range for the phone was 916mhz, so i added about 3 inches of wire internally to compensate for the longer wavelength. i just tested the communication in my building here and it appears that i get a reliable 175ft (in a building FULL of electronics) so thats not bad. will test later when i can go outside. it didnt appear that the rx antenna made much (if any) difference. i will leave it there for the time being and test sync speeds with it. stay tuned...
I've seen many mod to the transmitter antenna to extend the range. To me, the range doesn't really bother me that much. I do have an extra wire soldered to the transmitter and kept inside the plastic case. One thing I want to see / do (if I have time) is to reduce the false trigger by outside interferers. The pocket wizards doesn't has so much false trigger because the receiver is better. Has anyone thought about putting a metal shield around the RF module in the receiver? That will save the flash batteries a lot!
do you have v1 or v2? also i have read about foil inside the enclosure. i am also going to try that. if you do that though...you will need to run an antenna outside of the units because shielding will shield if from everything!
