OpenWrt Forum Archive

Topic: Best way to disable antenna (PCB antenna)

The content of this topic has been archived on 20 Apr 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

What is the best way to phisically disable a wifi antenna? (Like the antennas on the NEXX)

1 for security. to be 100% sure that there is no way to communicate wirelessly to the NEXX
2 to remove e-smog from the airwaves.
3 to hide the device
4 etc. :-)

I just noticed that the stock firmware from the nexx has a setting to reduce transmit power, BUT that doesn't seem to do the trick (So i hope openWRT does it better)  With  power all the way to 0 and saving the setting and rebooting the NEXX is still reachable over wifi...

just disable the wifi...? or buy a router without wifi smile

As they posted you, disable wifi, by default a fresh flash has wifi disable
and with OpenWrt you can lower the power, I don't really understand your goal, but that will do.

Thanks  yoyellow and danymarc

The goals:

In my case the NEXX is a cheap little device that can turn a HDD into a NAS, but i wanted to keep if out of the wifi domain.
I also have in mind to disable the wifi from and other NAS box, just to be sure that there is no way to get it's data crippled by WiFi script kiddies etc. thus hacking the electronics if there isn't a wrt flash available for it.

And then i can be 100% sure that wifi will be turned on accidentally (or on purpose by someone for whatever reason) This way it is possible to build a reasonable cheap yet  sufficient secure LAN (not connected to the web or outside world) even with a crap router if nothing else is available.

So depending on the situation the NEXX could be used in a LAN without new firmware. But yea, that doesn't make sense when you have OpenWRT.

So i'm still interested in info how to disable a wifi antenna with a soldering iron. :-)   

On top of that there are ever more wifi devices clogging up the bandwidth, so why not disable a few that are just taking up space (and cooking our meat, hehe)

I've seen that some of the German Fritzboxes have an external button to toggle the wifi on or off.  I think that would be a very nice feature to have in OpenWRT.  Read out a GPIO pin and toggle wifi on and off on the GPIO signal.

I just bumped into thisone:

I think it would be nice to have this in the wiki. and hosted on the openwrt site so it cant get lost.

http://www.anz.ru/files/mediatek/MT7620_Datasheet.pdf

i hoped to find some reference schematics for the wifi transmitter here...   but unfortunately i have to continue that search.

If you really want it disable, you can build an image your self and leave eveyrhting wifi out, saves space on the device as well...

Indeed!  Thanks,

Hmm I hope I can get my head around that, I'm still more at ease with a solder iron . :-)
I'm wondering though, if the software is not installed is the radio then also OFF? Or will the radio still be on with a silent channel?  (thus still demanding radio bandwith)

The discussion might have continued from here.