Zero 3W External Antenna switch

#1

I see that with Radxa OS you can use rsetup to switch from the onboard to external antenna but can it be done without rsetup on another distro (like DietPi) ? As in with a kernel parameter or something?

#2

You may need to modify one of the configuration files in the /boot directory, such as config.txt or extlinux/extlinux.conf.

#3

To what end, though? All I see in the wiki is to run rsetup and follow the menu.

Is there a particular kernel command line parameter I need to add?

#4

In fact, if you use rsetup to switch the external antenna, you’re just turning on the overlay, right?

#5

Normally, to open an overlay, you need to add a line to /boot/config.txt or /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf to open the overlay. rsetup just simplifies this step, so in other non Radxa OS, you need to add the configuration manually.

eg:

config.txt

dtoverlay=radxa-zero3-external-antenna
#6

Ah, I see. Yeah, I’m not all that familiar with what exactly overlays are as they don’t come into play with normal Linux use.

How would I confirm (aside from possible performance differences) that I’ve correctly enabled the external antenna?

Notably I have this in my dmesg output so I think this indicates I have no enabled the external antenna

[   11.736639] board_antenna: no parameters, enabled
#7

Thanks for the help Nasca.

That wasn’t exactly what I needed for DietPi but it got me on the right track.

It seems like DietPi used to use /boot/config.txt but doesn’t anymore.

Now overlays are specified in /boot/dietpiEnv.txt

I specifically needed these lines in that file to enable the external antenna

overlay_path=rockchip
overlay_prefix=radxa-zero3
overlays=external-antenna

I have only confirmed this is working via trial and error. My Radxa zero cannot connect to wifi when I use the above unless I attach an external antenna. So I’m only 90% sure that it’s working.

The dmesg output shows nothing particularly revealing - indeed the lines I pasted earlier about “board_antenna” are present with and without the overlay specified.

I’d love to know how I can be sure the antenna is being used otherwise but for now I think I’m good.