Hi,
I am looking for an external antenna for my Dragino LPS8. I initially thought of a homemade collinear antenna, but I now found the MikroTik 6.5dBi antenna for reasonable money, which would save me some time. Is anyone using this antenna? Would you recommend it for outdoors?
Regards,
Peter
I would not recommend a LPS8 outdoors. The mikrotik antenna is fine for outdoor use. Dragino also has an outdoors antenna available.
Thanks. The gateway will be located either indoor, or outdoor protected by an IP66/67 case, so that should not be a problem (I still thinking about length of the antenna cable, lightning protection and good height of the antenna). Meanwhile I have ordered the MikroTik antenna and will give it a try.
I’m using them outdoors - They are a bit long and thin and flex a bit in the wind compared to other antennas, but they are cheap and come with an SMA to SMA cable ready to go.
If it’s a windy area, I suggest the HyperLink HGV-906U. It is terminated with an N female connector and does not come with a cable.
Whichever way you go, make sure you use coax seal or some other tape to weatherproof the conectors
Compared to surge arrestors with N connetors SMA surge arrestors are quite expensive here.
That is why i installed my mikrotik antenna only “semi-outdoor” (underneath the lightning protection of the building) and used an ethernet surge arrestor to protect the internal installation.
I have been using MikroTik 6.5dBi on a farm but i cant give you max range info yet as all the sensors are only in 100-200m distance Hopefully it can do a few kms on this flat area.
Somehow a part of my Gott lost.
I usw a complete wAP Lora8 Kit with mentioned antenna.
Here you can See the coverage on ttnmapper.
The geographic topology ist somewhat Special an in some locations usefull and in other very limiting.
But as visible the coverage with good antennas on both sides ist quite amazing.
Really impressive coverage, probably due to the flat area in your region. Here, close to Düsseldorf, it’s different - slight hills around and heavyly built on. In my opinion, the altitude is the major criteria for good coverage, and the antenna gain more a factor to compensate cable loss.
I now got the microTik antenna (currently still indoor), looks good so far, but need to be brought outdoor to get improvements compared to the stick antenna of the Dragino LPS8.
I use the Horizon 868 8V1 antenna together with my LPS8-gateways. This is an selective antenna for 868 MHz, its gain is compensated by the loss of the coaxial cable between the outdoor antenna and the indoor gateway.
The most limiting thing for the coverage is the Line of Sight. Theoretically the coverage is more than 300km with SF7/125kHz and more than 1200km with SF12/125kHz (14dBm ERP, Semtech SX1276). But if there is something in between disturbing the Fresnel-zone the coverage will decrease significantly.
I have a one, mounted on a public gateway (mikrotik Basebox2 + R11e-LoRa8 radio), processes 10000+ messages per day.
Been running for a year.
It is setup on a 9m mast, on a strategic geographic place (highest surrounding mountain), coverage should be 50km+ on most directions from some budget analysis I made.
so far has stood strong winds (40km/h+) rains, etc fine. Using stock piigtail.
I thought it being a public gateway will plot “public coverage” on TTN-Mapper, but either I didn’t manage to get it to work, or only your devices are plotted?
Edit: it seems I can get some radar shapes… (after enabling Fake GPS in Mikrotik LoRa device settings) longest transmision: 57Km
I have 3 of these( and a 4th soon to be mounted) in the arctic conditions in Northern Norway, and they have survived snowstorms, rain and wind(over 100km/h wind some times). I have mine mounted on tall(40+ meter high) buildings in strategic positions, but due to challenging geography, I haven’t had the change to really test their LOS range.
TTNMapper experiment-data: TTNMapper Test Experiment (there’s one third-party gateway which has the wrong coordinates)
Thanks for posting @bjornlljohansen !
I would love to analyze coverage more thoroughly, but sadly TTN-Mapper and TTN-Console fail constantly and displays the gateway as “not connected”…
Hope TTN V3 will fix this…
Really good coverage, specially taking into account all the surrounding water masses (Knife-edge effect)
Hope you don’t mind posting a screenshot for posterity just in case TTN loses it…
I would recommend not using a homemade collinear antenna. For such purposes as these, I would recommend the MikroTik 6.5dBi antenna; it will perform well without any personal fabrication of custom parts!
You can consider ISP Supplies, a value added distributor of Mikrotik, to get MikroTik 6.5dBi antenna.
Good Luck
Regards
Cory
Humm!, responsing to a post that is 1 year old - no doubt OP has long since moved on and done one thing or another 
Note:
Unless you are having to overcome significant connector and antenna feed losses the recommendation normally is avoid higher gain antennas! Why do you need the extra gain? Higher gain is often associated with 1) increased directionality, 2) notching in coverage out to horizon, affecting nearer nodes, 3) up or down tilt to beam if not chosen or mounted well, 4) potential breach of local radio EIRP limits - unless TX power of gw backed down to compensate - hence often defeating additional gain!, 5) increased cost etc. There is a reason why emergency services tend to use smaller lower gain antenna that give more even coverage that is closer to isotropic radiator. Most GW’s designed/set up OoTB to work with a 2/2.1/3.1/3.5dbi ant… Use Forum Search to see many discussions around ant choice over the years…