I know its unsupported but i did this
to the hardware gurus does it actually work???
We screw up VeraPlus and look at what we find under the hood. There we actually find something unexpected!
We have previously written about how to switch to a better antenna on both Vera3 and VeraLite , but is it possible to change the antenna on VeraPlus?
Yes, you can, but unfortunately it is not as easy anymore. There is no contact that can be loosened for the antenna as before, but it is fixed soldered.
We screw up VeraPlus and look at what we find under the hood. There we actually find something unexpected!
We have previously written about how to switch to a better antenna on both Vera3 and VeraLite , but is it possible to change the antenna on VeraPlus?
Yes, you can, but unfortunately it is not as easy anymore. There is no contact that can be loosened for the antenna as before, but it is fixed soldered.
Yes what do you do then? You take out the soldering iron and start! E marks the antenna itself for the Z-wave chip. I start by cutting off the bone to the right of the “coil” which forms the antenna, and bends it away and melts it out of the way.
After that, I cut off the cable for the SMA adapter and solder the innermost part of the cable which is the part to be connected to the antenna.
It’s grounded or it’s called. As you may know, these antenna cables usually consist of 2 conductors. Soil left so clear. I attach a separate cable to a grounded surface on the “motherboard” and connect it to the actual SMA connector.
Now I drill a hole for the actual SMA connector and screw it into the plastic box.
So there, just screw the antenna! I use the same antenna as last.
Aurel GP 868 is a ground plane antenna that has a much longer range than the antenna that comes with VeraPlus. The Aurel antenna uses a BNC connector, which means that I must have an adapter from SMA to BNC .
And this is how the actual SMA connector looks like cable before I cut off the small plug to solder it in Veran.
Clear! Now I got in touch with my motion sensor on the garage which I did not have contact with since I switched from my Vera3 with the same antenna.
But what was the unexpected I found under the hood? Well if you check in the middle of the picture and a little to the left under the sticky note it says U8 433 MHZ. Presumably, VeraPlus was supposed to receive support for 433 MHz units, but for some reason Vera chose not to include it at launch.
Here is a picture of how the back looks.
In the lid there are a lot of antennas that need to be disconnected before lifting the lid. And if you look carefully you will see that the lid is stuck with small plastic hooks. To pick up the lid I took a plastic card (credit card) and wedged between the lid and the rest of the plastic box. Using the plastic card, I snapped up the plastic hooks one by one, by moving the card around the entire box.
Here we see an overview of the remaining antennas that are stuck around the sides of the plastic box itself. Many will.
And are you thinking about doing the same yourself so keep in mind that the warranty ends. But always fun to have an excuse to warm up the soldering iron Good luck!
just my opinion.