Be good if you can share some more details of you setup, sounds awesome.I work from my van instead of "work from home" and do zoom calls all day long. I needed something fast, stable and reliable. I researched this extensively and ended up with this unit:
Huawei 5G Router CPE Pro 2 inkl. externer Antennenaschlüsse
FTS Hennig bietet den 5G CPE Pro 2 Router von Huawei exklusiv mit 6 externen Antennenanschlüssen an - für besten 5G Empfang zu Hause & im Büro!www.fts-hennig.de
Not cheap, but I don't have any issues whatsoever and always get superb reception and bandwidth. I previously had a Netgear m5 5200 5G router and it was pathetic compared to this modified one from FTS Hennig. Using a 12v cable it pulls 2A/24 watts peak. I've got 4 wifi dashcams, and I recently setup a homekit setup with 2 homepod mini's to use for music or home theater as well. Never skips a beat and super fast wifi 6 with 5G speeds far above OEM internals with their antenna's!
Really not much to it. I bought the unit I posted with the external antennas (note, these are external to the router, not mounted externally to the van). I then bought their 12v 2A cable and had a 12v socket installed inside a cabinet and fixed the router with heavy duty velcro.
Ah good, and just connect HomeKit to the wifi…what cameras did you get?
Interesting article. Main thing I take from it is what I thought anyway - don’t bother because 9/10 your phone will work fine. It seems a lot of money and faff to me for very small incremental, if any, real gains. There was a mention in there of a faraday effect from a phone antenea due to a metal van. While I’m not convinced of this, I do find just putting the phone in the pop top gets a better signal most of the time, which could be due to it being higher, could be due to less metal.
We currently have a ZTE 5G mifi. Gets up to 200 down and 30 up which is more than enough for work zoom/webex/teams calls and picks up a decent signal when my phone cannot.
I bought Garmin mini 2's for the sides and rear and a Garmin 67w for the front. Note, those are not homekit cameras but wifi enabled so you can check on the van remotely. I use HomeKit for the sound setup with 2 homepod mini's in stereo setup and also an Eve Room so I can monitor the temps of the van from anywhere using Apple Home app on my phone.
Typically when you connect the 2 external antenna's it will drop down to 4G/4G+, at least on the Netgear 5200 M5 models. Why? The internal antenna's for 5G are MIMO and would require 4 externals. Would be interesting to check this on yours.
Use cases vary for everyone. I absolutely love checking on my van remotely by connecting to my wifi cameras and also the Eve Room to check temps. I always park outside due to having a 2.8 meter van with a high roof. It's also much more convenient to have a fixed wifi hotspot in the van if you work for hours and hours inside or near the van. Using a phone as a hotspot is fine for the quick fix, but not much more in my case.
Been using this Kuma caravan set up a bit recently, really good on the move and even in remote valleys in Wales it’s picking up 4g when my phone struggles
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