Portable WiFi router for ASIAIR Pro

[paul]

I love this box, it has a ton of features and is very simple to use but the ASIAIR pro has one serious design flaw for wireless communication - they put it in a metal box!  Its designed to be used wirelessly with a  phone or tablet (there isn't a PC app of course).  If you are more than 1-2m away the signal drops off quickly to very low levels with frequent dropped packets.  This makes the app response sluggish. 

 

ZWO have badged a portable WiFi router from Vonets to address the issue. Wanting to experiment I decided to buy one of Vonets' own VAR11N-300 (normally sold for older games consoles and tv boxes with no WiFi). Its half the size of a credit card,  powered by any DC supply from 5-15v and consumes about 250mW.

 

As a test I connected my tablet to the ASIAIR hotspot and set up the guidescope for a 0.5 sec capture. At 1-2m the frames per second indicated on the tablet was 2 as expected but moving out to 3m  the FPS dropped quickly to less than 1 FPS and by 4m it was around 0.3FPS. That suggests that even in the 1-2m range there are going to be frequent dropped packets.

 

I then plugged in the Vonets to the ASIAIR 12v supply and ethernet port and connected my tablet to its hotspot. The FPS jumped back up to 2 FPS  at 4m  and maintained that when I went down stairs. 

 

Using a WiFi scanner app on my phone shows that the Vonets router is about 20dB (100 times) stronger than the signal from the ASIAIR Pro.

 

This device is simple to set up, just power it up (using USB or 12V) and connect to it with your phone and configure it as you like. If you plug an ethernet cable between the Vonets and your internet router you can easily update the FW or just use it as a WiFi AP. If can also be used as a range extender. Its a very flexible piece of kit that lends itself to a number of applications.

 

I might paint the case black, its a bit transparent and the LEDs are very bright.

 

[MarkAR]

Nice one, wonder if it'll work with a raspberry Pi as well.