Hotspot Hardware Setup - Add note to never power on device while antenna is off about helium-guides HOT 16 CLOSED

No need to engineer a solution, just slap a warning sticker on it

from helium-guides.

I'd say the risk is fairly low and it's been a common thing with any radio technology.

However we could for production get a little sticker over the power connector,

from helium-guides.

@suprnrdy does this cause some issue with Helium if you do? Or you just mean because it won't work properly?

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@shawaj It's actually to protect the LoRa module as it can cause damage if ran without an antenna connected.

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Fixed for indoor, leaving open to remember to put it in the outdoor's guide.

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@shawaj It's actually to protect the LoRa module as it can cause damage if ran without an antenna connected.

Would it be possible to add a check for this in software? It does sound like an easy mistake to make when assembling it (e.g. not screwed in properly).

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Not that I know of @vpetersson.

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Yeah I thought that was a long shot, but just thought I'd ask. Any chance we could use a proxy for it, such as RSSI or similar?

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I think the issue is any software route would mean the module turns on and then essentially is at the stage where it could cause damage.

I also don't think we could use RSSI / Signal strength and run a scan on boot as the hotspot is the gateway so it wouldn't have anything to scan in comparison to wi-fi.

However it is quite hard to not screw this antenna on right and I think even only partially screwed in the antenna is connected so should be fine on that angle.

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Fair enough, @ryanteck.

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Maybe there's a way to do it in hardware @ryanteck @vpetersson for a v2. Does seem like a bit of a pain for a consumer product. Should ideally fail safe - because well people are stupid sometimes I guess. But probably not as trivial as I'm making it sound of course 🤣

Something to consider anyway

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I would guess this would be something that has to be designed into the mPCIe module rather than the gateways themselves so could be something that Milan could look into for that?

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cc @mmilann

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I'd say it's worth it. We're not selling to a lot of RF educated customers, so best warn them ahead of time. You can put the sticker next to the power plug.

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Could be above or below yeah, I thought if over then they couldn't pretend to have not seen it.

Slightly smaller too maybe,

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Yeah - and/or we could just print it on the plastic. But yes - i agree that would be good. It is hidden anyway so may as well

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