Mounting an antenna on my "VanAssistant" Camper?
By Rob Litjens
Previously I have installed the Router and the Raspberry Pi in my Camper (Or RV as some of us name them). But next to this, I also needed to install an external Antenna. For this job, the wheather needed to be adjusted a litle bit. In other words… I needed to wait.
It took a few weeks before the wheater became nice and predictive.
Before you can mount an antenna, you need to buy one. I did a lot of investigation in what antenna I would need in my Camper.
What antenna do you need?
This is a dificult question. It really depends on your router. The Rutx50 has 4 LTE antenna’s for 4g and 5g (in MIMO mode), it has two WiFi anteanna’s and a GPS antenna. All of these are SMA connectors. But, if you for example are using a Netgear Nighthawk, you only have two connectors of the TS-9 type.
I have been looking at sharkvin types and dome types. After talking to people in the industries related for distribution (they know exactly where a car is and if he could have some extra packages), I opted for a Dome type. Then what brand? There are quite a few like Poynting and Amazon has a lot of them also, but I went for a Panorama Antenna of the type LGMDM4-6-60-24-58. This one has all the required antenna’s and connectors in place
Preparing the Antenna
The antenna comes with cables of one meter. It should fit through a 19 mm hole in the roof. The antenna itself has a iron neck under the dome. This dome also has dubbelzijdige tape to mount it to a surface. From the iron neck there are 7 cables going down with a SMA connector. These are not grouped together, but they are marked!
To group the cables, Panorama has enclosed a shrink tubing set of 7. Those seven are just small (or large) enough to have all the cables go through. You first have to get all shrink tubes over the cables so that they become bundles. I divided them in such a way that I had two shrink tubes at the Antenna sites so that they would protect the cables from the sharp sides of the roof (mostly Aluminium), that would look like the below picture.
The tube needs to be warmed to shrink. I used a hairdryer for that. In the beginning it took a long time before the tube shronk. Then I took a box of the Antenna and put that part of the cable with the shrink tube in it. After that it took less than a minute to shrink. Below you will see how that looked like… Silly but it works like a charm. The heat just does not disappear
When the shrinking and grouping of the cables is done, you will need to find a space to drill a hole. I thought about the best approach of it. It is bit theoretical, but you should look for existing cables on the roof (think about solar panels) and see where they arrive inside. I had the luck that that was in a cabinet. I then looked at the diameter of the antenna (18cm) and checked if that was an option. I drilled a 3 or 4 mm hole from the inside to the outside. I declared my Campervan official ’leaking’. I then went outside and took the 19mm hole saw and drilled it at the place where i found the 3 mm hole.
Below you will find the hole of the roof. The little hole? Well i have some addtional plastic on the roof and found out that I would not be able to put my antenna on that place. Just 9mm to much to the side. In this case it was not worse, because the bigger whole would be connected and the sikaflex would fill it.
When the hole is there it is time to put the antenna on the roof and see if it fits. The last part of all antenna’s fits in.
Then you need to take your caulking gun and add sikaflex 221 around the edges of the antenna, but also around the place where the cables will go in the campervan. Be cautios to make sure not to put kit on your cables. It is not easy to clean it. Below you can see how it looked in my case.
Then I gently placed the antenna on its place and pressed it firmly. After that I ensured the kit is arround the antenna.
When it is place you need to keep it under a certain pressure to let it dry. I opted for a towel and a few cobblestones…
Mounting the Raspberry Pi and the Router
The set of 7 cables is now hanging in the campervan. It is time to go in and fix that. I took some pipe clips, changed them from nail to screw. That makes fixing in the campervan more easy.
Mounted, it looks like this:
Because I wanted the router and the raspberry Pi close to each other with having room to breath and space for the cables I created a wooden bracket. It fits exactly between the bottom and the ceiling of the cabinet against the wall. Inside the bracket it is open by design. That gives room for Air (it can get really hot in the campervan sometimes). On the bracket the router as well as the Raspberry Pi are mounted. They will not leave without unscrewing the bracket. The left overs of the cabling and power is at the back of the bracket
Tools and materials needed
- Drill of 19 mm (bought at toolstation)
- kit gun
- sikaflex 221 kit
- towels to clean
- Antenna (panorama antenna)