We826-T2 with Quactel EP06-A and GPS

[swagr]

Hello, I have the WE826-T2 from KuWifi, the Cat 6 version with an Quactel EP06-A modem in it that come Saturday I should have up and running on AT&T’s network. The device shipped to me pre-installed of the modem and a WRT firmware that appears pretty well matured though there are two firmware updates I can chose one of to apply. I’ll take a look at that later.

It also shipped with 4 antennae’s, 2 for 2.4 MIMO, no 5Ghz, and 2 for the 4G LTE. These are run of the mill 4-5 dbi SMA style onmi’s.

From the pics on this site and what I am reading there’s a fifth antennae that can be installed. The GPS antennae. I see no exit holes in the router that would accommodate a cable. I see no GPS plugs. There’s no 5th antennae port. How does one add in the 5th antennae? Also, being the newb to cellular based backhaul and the various model configurations can someone tell me what advantages I gain by having said gps antennae? Does forgoing the antennae still yield a signal that can be acquired as needed for gps functions? Or is it off until plugged in? What is a sufficient antennae to get that will install nicely and work ideally? Is this plug and play I do not readily see configuration settings in the firmware?

Thanks very much.

[Didneywhorl]

I think your the first person Ive ever heard of asking to enable GPS on their router, lol!

Few things, first of which is I do not think the common open source router firmwares even have gps interfaces built in. Ill have to dig. I have seen custom android based firmware use it.

The specific modem you have, the EP06-A, does have a gps antenna port. The router is not made to accommodate this. You CAN drill a hole, buy an antenna cable pigtail, and install it yourself.

This, though, brings us back to firmware support; or lack of.

You may be the pioneer in this.

Search this forum for "GPS" and see what pops up. Google "OpenWRT GPS" and you might find resources.

[swagr]

I know the MOFI has a 5 antennae version and the router I have is an exact inbred clone of the same aside from the screen print on the top side. I can’t see close enough on the MOFI to really get an idea how it was installed. Anyone know what firmware MOFI runs?

What specifically does having a GPS enabled modem do for you assuming I had firmware that cold walk the walk and talk the talk?

[swagr]

After a little bit of research I have at least figured out why one would want to enable the GPS option.

First one would be if you are deploying on a mobile vehicle or a fleet of mobile vehicles. This gives you the ability to track this single vehicle or the fleet through GPS and see what the driver(s) is/are up to. You don’t have to buy a separate GPS tracking device in order to make that happen.

Some applications apparently are extremely sensitive to time and must be very exacting. I suspect things like trading applications or anything to do with money exchanges. GPS is used to make a highly accurate time zone selection with drift/skew taken into account. in order to be certain if the cutoff time was x you got your stuff posted before x expires or in effigy us closed etc.

I only wonder if that particular modem picks up a GPS signal even if there is no antenna. I know that Wi-Fi for example can still actually grab a signal under certain circumstances even if there are no antennas plugged in. In this case it probably won’t because I don’t believe the firmware has any intelligence to be made aware of what the heck to do about GPS to begin with.

[Didneywhorl]

The mofi routers use their own in house firmware, which I believe is a customized openWRT based build. But I really do not know. The modems I believe use the modem manufacturers stock firmware, depending on the model.