[Jeija] was playing with some ESP32s as well as in true hacker fashion, he wondered exactly how far he might pull them apart as well as still get data flowing. His video response to that concern covers the Friis equation as well as has a great deal of great examples of utilizing the equation, decibels, as well as even a useful example that covers about 10km. You can see the video below.

Of course, to get that type of variety you requirement a directional antenna. To prevent violating policies that manage transmit power, he’s utilizing the antenna on the getting end. That likewise implies he had to hack the ESP32 WiFi stack to make the gadget listen only on one side. The hack includes putting the gadget in promiscuous mode as well as only tracking the signals being sent. You can discover the code included on GitHub (complete with a rickrolling application).

Of course, antennas are nothing new–look whatsoever the Pringle can antennas we’ve seen in the past. However, the utilize of a long variety receive-only module is fascinating as well as we can see this method having applications to remote drone video or telemetry as well as — of program — wardriving. If you don’t have a huge manager antenna lying around, you may try some duct tape. If you want a much more comprehensive refresher on decibels, we did that last month.