Hybrid Connect - attaching additional antennas

[Trevstar]

Hi troysie,
It looks like a good way to boost! one issue is how to get the wire in, placing the antenna outside! with double glazed windows?

[Trevstar]

Hi 87lions31,

Just got the SMA Antenna 10dBi 4G LTE Antenna WiFi Antenna High Gain Signal Booster for 3G/4G Router Modem ZTE USB Dongle Huawei E5372 E398 E3276 E392 E3272 E8278, from Amazon for 9.99.

It took me a while to fiddle around, with 1 Bar signal strength at 111dbm. moved the Hybrid Connect to the window but no change. then just got both the antennas touching each other and managed 2 bars with signal level showing 105dBm! 

Hope it remains and works when the broadband goes down!

I Will post back here if anything changes.

Cheers

[87lions31]

Hi Trevstar,

That's awesome, I think I'll try adjusting my own antennas to see if they get a boost from touching too 🙂

[Frank1947]

I'm in an area which according to BT's map is good to excellent on 4G reception. My mobile phone might be smarter than me, but it isn't a smart phone. My neighbour has one that is but says there is virtually no 4G reception. I set up one evening as instructed and could only get one bar. Next morning the phone line was dead, not something I'd done but Openreach replacing poles. Hybrid Connect had switched to one white bar but I could get the internet. I'm out in the country so though a poor signal there probably isn't much interference. 

I've bought and fitted 

SMA Antenna 10dBi 4G LTE Antenna Wi Fi Antenna High Gain Signal Booster for 3G/4G Router Modem ZTE USB Dongle Huawei E5372 E398 E3276 E392 E3272 E8278

I now have two bars lit so these aerials at £9.99 do seem to work. 

Thanks to those who's posts helped me and I hope this helps someone else

[Trevstar]

Hi,

Not good this day as signal dropped to one bar! Strength at -115dBm-connection weak.

[Trevstar]

Got back to 2 bars! strength now at -104dBm! not sure how long it will last.....

[Frank1947]

Trevstar,

From a practical view it may not matter exactly what your signal strength is. As I said earlier I can get broadband here on one bar. It will be affected by how much interference there is around you, in a city maybe quite a bit. 

I haven't tried this but it was suggested by an Openreach engineer. Do a broadband speed test with all the connections in. Repeat with the BT box to Hub cable disconnected. Give it time to acquire the 4G signal  before you retest. When I'd just one bar I could pull in BBC news, e-mails and an Amazon Echo playing the radio. In fact everything I'd normally be doing. Unless you are streaming TV to a couple of TVs on different channels anything above 10MB should be enough.

[Trevstar]

Thanks for the reply. will see how it goes and repost!

[TheProfessor]

use an internet browser attached to your hub type in 192.168.1.254 you will see your hub tiles in purple click the hybrid connect tile and that will show you its status

[casaschi]

Just reporting an unexpected experience with antennas for the BT Hybrid Connect.

The device setup nicely, showing two bars and -94db signal strength without additional antennas. It has been like this for few weeks since I installed the BT Hybrid Connect device. Not too bad. I decided to try attaching  a set of very cheap antennas and see if the connection would improve. To my surprise, with the antennas, the best signal strength I could get was the same -94db; with some creative positioning of the antennas I could only make this worse, I've seen up to -101db.

Most surprisingly, after concluding that those cheap antennas were good for nothing, I removed them only to see the signal strength without the additional antennas finally settling on -99db.

Anyone with a guess why the worse strength without antennas at the end of my unlucky experiment?

Could it be the signal strength measurement from the device is not so reliable?

No big deal, just odd.