ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu Oct 01, 2015 6:40 pm #30303

I need a stable connection between two ESPs at a distance of 500 meters.

One of the ESPs is stationary, the other is moving around.

The ESP range is pretty good considering size and price... but not that good. It would be pointlessly expensive, illegal and a hassle to try amplifying the RF of this chip. A better choice would be to try a higher-powered wifi unit as the stationary unit... but even there I suspect it still wouldn't be reliable to 500m.

What are you trying to do? There are better inexpensive digital radio units out there which would serve that range.

(Disclaimer - I once set up a fixed long-distance wifi video link using Ubiquiti units and directional antennas that could do > 500m. Radios + antennas was over $350)

- Fri Oct 02, 2015 3:46 am #30334 Have you tried it to see what range you get with the ESP without an amplifier? 500m might be possible without an extra amp (if its line-of-sight without things in the way).

I did a simple range test with an ESP-12 with its PCB antenna, described here, and that must have got almost 300m.

I've also tried a few different external antenna's on an ESP-07:

IMAG1594.jpg

I haven't done the range test with those but i've tried the ESP doing a WiFi scan for visible access points with them and get something like 12 in range with the pcb anntenna, about the same with one of the short antennas, about 18 to 20 with the other short one, and over 30 with the big TP-Link antenna (not very precise as it changes a bit each scan).

I don't know what the short antennas are, just old ones in a draw, but this is the TP-Link one - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251888207951

So maybe if you had 8dBi antennas at each end you might get 500m?

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- Fri Oct 02, 2015 4:42 am #30342 Also you might try using the 802.11g or even 802.11b PHY, it may increase the range because the modulation is "less complex" (especially for 802.11b) and therefore may be easier to recover from background noise.

- Fri Oct 02, 2015 5:49 am #30350

What are you trying to do?

Implementing a wireless CAN-Bridge.

There are better inexpensive digital radio units out there which would serve that range.

Also at a datarate of ~1Mbps?