After doing quite a bit of investigation into the reasons for the wireless being unstable on our tablets I made an interesting discovery.I attempt to stream a 10 minute youtube video using the built in app which normally with no changes will drop the wireless connection anywhere between 30 seconds and 3 minutes.
If the txpower is reduced there is maybe a 10 second improvement but nothing more.Altering the txbeacon setting can add another minute to the playback but tends to knock the wifi out on my router when it does drop.
As an observation I found the wifi card gets incredibly hot during use, made worse with high data throughput so with this in mind I took the tablet apart and streamed the video while directing compressed air onto the wifi chip. This made a massive difference and kept everything stable for the entire video.
I'm summising that the wifi dropouts we are seeing are mostly relating to heat as the wifi card is literally stuck to the mainboard with tape with no ventilation at all.As a test I have built up a heatsink "pad" on the chip with "cool tape" which is used to insulate items on turbo cars to reduce heat build-up. I've also coated the back of the case with it and added some thermal compound to help transfer the heat away from the wifi card and into the body of the tablet.
So far it's looking good as I've had a good connection from loading the browser right through to posting the message - yesterday I could only hold the connection for a minute at a time if I was lucky.
Will post back my findings on how the heatsink mod goes but the early signs are very promising!
If the txpower is reduced there is maybe a 10 second improvement but nothing more.Altering the txbeacon setting can add another minute to the playback but tends to knock the wifi out on my router when it does drop.
As an observation I found the wifi card gets incredibly hot during use, made worse with high data throughput so with this in mind I took the tablet apart and streamed the video while directing compressed air onto the wifi chip. This made a massive difference and kept everything stable for the entire video.
I'm summising that the wifi dropouts we are seeing are mostly relating to heat as the wifi card is literally stuck to the mainboard with tape with no ventilation at all.As a test I have built up a heatsink "pad" on the chip with "cool tape" which is used to insulate items on turbo cars to reduce heat build-up. I've also coated the back of the case with it and added some thermal compound to help transfer the heat away from the wifi card and into the body of the tablet.
So far it's looking good as I've had a good connection from loading the browser right through to posting the message - yesterday I could only hold the connection for a minute at a time if I was lucky.
Will post back my findings on how the heatsink mod goes but the early signs are very promising!
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