Sunday
Feb282010
Acer Aspire Revo R3610 WiFi Aerial Mod
Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 10:14PM 
I've hacked together a cheap and easy fix for the poor quality signal received by my internal WiFi card on my Revo 3610. As usual a video says a thousand words - but the picture above will have prematurely given the whole game away if you know anything about what sockets do and don't belong on a Revo.
Edit - (Update)... I thought I should mention that the reason I am sticking with the internal card rather than just using a USB WiFi dongle is because my internal mini PCie card works on the 5Ghz band and I can't find a 5Ghz dongle.
Reader Comments (18)
THis is great! i just ordered the parts to do it to mine because im in a dorm and my signal sucksss.
thanks
Wow that was quick work, I'm happy that you found this useful. I think that the wifi signal gets blocked by all the metal shielding inside the Revo. Please report back about how you got on.
Hello, I want to try this. It looks like the wireless card upgrade you did to the BCM4321 supports around 270-300 MBPS. Does the wireless router you use depend on whether you can transmit these speeds. The router I am using is
http://www.actiontec.com/support/product_details.php?pid=188&typ=doc
The issue I'm having is on speedtest.net my download speeds only get up to around 4 MBPs on the revo, while my desktop through ethernet gets around 25 MBPS. streaming video and downloading is slow and choppy on my acer revo. The wireless modem is only around 10 feet from the acer revo with no obstructions. Wondering if the attena mod along with replacing the wireless card to the BCM4321 will do the trick? If i do this might also be a good time to upgrade the 2 gigs to 4. Has anyone done this and seen worth while improvements. It's the 330 atom processor.
Unless I'm mistaken - that router is 802.11 b/g only and therefore there would be no point in upgrading your Revo to 802.11n because it'll only run at 802.11g speed.
I'm not too sure what speed you should be getting from 802.11g - but 4mbps might actually be normal.
If you are getting a good signal then there wouldn't be much point in adding the external aerial either - sorry I couldn't help more - maybe someone else could comment here with some advice.
Hi, i am looking at doing the same modification to my revo, i am having trouble finding the mini pci-e card wolud you please tell me where you brought yours from. Many thenks
@Ben
No problem - just search Ebay for the following item "HP BCM4321" - you will find a number of people in HK/China selling them for approx £15. These have been pulled from Laptops and are in new condition. I have no idea why they have so many of these for sale. This is how I got mine.
Hi As for the Aspire Revo R3610, Did you experience in very slow in viewing online/internet tv programs, surfing the internet, etc?? I have 4GB RAM installed and running WIFI 802.11n
Hope u all can share this info. Thanks.
Hi Tom.
I have the same computer (R3610 with 4GB) and exact same problem. All browsing/downloading very slow compared with my laptop (which has less RAM and lower CPU) even though the signal strength is good
Acer just say to restore to factory settings, which means days spent reloading everything and may well not fix the problem. Any better ideas please anyone. Please.
I've got to say that I haven't experienced this (yet). What OS are you using?
I bought Revo couple of weeks ago. They have now upgraded the wireless card (with draft-N capability). But seems like it can only detect 2.4ghz signal, I have Dlink DIR-825 Quadband router with 2.4ghz and 5ghz dual access points. Even though my older laptop is able to detect the 5ghz signal, my revo is unable to do so (2.4ghz n signal is working fine). Any ideas or solutions to make it work ? Has anyone faced similar problem ? Thanks.
@MasterOfDisaster
A lot of wireless N cards only work on 2.4ghz, 5ghz is a lot rarer. It sounds like you'll have to restrict yourself to using the 2.4ghz band with your Revo 2.4 ghz transmits further than 5ghz anyway - so as with everything it's a trade off.
Hi Techmoan,
I took your idea a bit further. Since the wifi card has two connectors and uses two antennas for antenna diversity I removed both existing internal antennas (which are just pieces of sheet metal - those held to the casing by yellow tape) and their connectors, and replaced them with two male sma to u.fl adapters. I decided to place the sma sockets in the existing antenna cavities and I drilled the holes aligning them with the small cable notches in the metal shielding. This way the placement of the two sma sockets on my 3610 Revo is as follows: one next to the nVidia Ion label and the other on the "bottom" corner, next to the cable lock slot.
Now I can connect any two aerials and look for the best configuration. Just for the looks however I ordered a pair of those small D-link 2dbi antennas, in white - they should match up nicely with white casing of the Revo.
I have one question: How did you know this particular card that you used would work with the Revo? How do you determine wifi N card compatibility? Is there a guide you can follow?
The WiFi card was just a lucky guess. I got the cheapest N 5ghz model I could find and fortunately it worked perfectly. You'll have to let me know how you get on with the twin aerials. I think one is for transmission and one is for reception (but I'm not 100% on this).
Thanks for the great video etc. It's given me the idea to do the same as I could do with 80211.n speeds, I was just wondering if anyone has an idea about what SMA antenna to use as they are usually made for the 2.4Ghz band and not the 5Ghz or does in not matter that much at all... any suggestions on which one would get the most out of the wireless in terms of make/brand within reason cost wise?
Thanks again.
F
@Fred
After I made this video, I found out that there were different aerials for 5ghz and 2.4ghz frequencies. As my aerial was a bit floppy I decided to buy a replacement 5ghz equivalent model.
It didn't make a tiny bit of difference to the signal quality or strength received for me, so based on my experience I'd say just get the 2.4ghz aerial.
@Fred
I ordered 2.4 GHz - 2dbi D-link and 5 dbi Linksys antennas, and I also found a 5GHz - 9dbi model that is only 13 cm long.
You can get any of these on Ebay for less than 5 USD each, shipping included, sent from Hong Kong or China, if you don't mind waiting around 10-15 days. I'm still waiting for mine to arrive.
Hello Techmoan,
Thanks for the proof that the Revo actually has the ability to achieve wireless N speeds with an external antenna. I also replaced the Atheros pci-e card with a ebay'd chinese hp card (HP Intel 4965 (441086-001)) and downloaded the W7x64 Home Premium driver for the 2530p laptop from hp.com (card choice was based on my being stateside). My speed jumped from a pitiful 15Kbps to about 3Mbps and I can stream everything but HD flash from the TV networks (eg nbc.com) - wireless properties indicate 5 bars and 130Mbps; cpu is 50-60%, free memory is 1GB w/ 4GB installed. I'm going to follow your lead and see what happens! Kudos.
@ Tom & Freydis,
The R3610 will only support up to 3GB RAM and Acer don't seem to have any plans to update the BIOS for 4GB support, little bit dodgy considering they were selling them with 4GB?! They've stopped now and you can't get a 4GB box off the shelf anymore.
My Revo is actually faster browsing than my desktop. My revo has an upgraded intel 5100 mini pci-e, but just the standard antenna (waiting for my u.fl to sma pigtail to arrive) and my desktop has a 9DBi external antenna - fingers crossed it'll pick up even more with an external. Some flash video was a bit choppy but installing flash 10.1 beta soon sorted that out.
@Techmoan,
Brilliant video, I was stuck between a ASROCK ION 330-HT and the revo, your video swung it and i'm very happy with the revo. Cheers mate!