📡 WEMOS D1 Mini Pro with External Antenna Connector and 16MB/4MB Memory ESP-8266EX CP2104 WiFi Development Board (Including Antenna - 128MBIT/16MB) Review

This card is not configured to use the supplied external antenna. You need to move the 0 ohm resistor to connect the antenna connector on the board, otherwise the built in antenna will be used. To make matters worse, the SMA connector has the wrong polarity for Wi-Fi. So if you want to use a different antenna than the one included in the kit, it won't work. Don't buy it if 1) you can't connect the 0 ohm surface mount resistor to the correct terminal or 2) you plan to use a different external…

As mentioned, some soldering is required to get the external antenna working. Remove the 0K resistor by unsoldering it or just cutting it out. There is no need to reuse the SMD part; A drop of solder is enough to connect pads. The external antenna improved the signal from -89 dB to -78 dB. Not impressive, but enough gain to reliably transmit the small packets required by my application.

I was able to remove the 0 ohm resistor and solder the connection to the external antenna as described by others. It wasn't an easy task, but I made sure the connection was fine. However, a WLAN scan with an external antenna showed that the reception was still worse than with the normal D1 Mini. I may have done it wrong, but if so, I'm sure others will too. The point of buying the D1 Pro is to have an external antenna for better gain, so it needs to be matched to that antenna rather than…

I bought this because of the external antenna. When I started working with the device, I found that it couldn't detect a Wi-Fi hotspot to connect to and couldn't broadcast its own SSID. It blinks fine and shows in the serial terminal that it's looking for an access point that's across the room but never finds it and won't connect. Of course, the "window of return" has expired, maybe for a week. I can't use it if the radio in it is broken.

This working device failed to connect to Wi-Fi via the internal antenna. Checked, the code loads fine. I tried shifting 0 ohms to get the external antenna to work but the device still couldn't connect to wifi. I uploaded the same code to NodeMCU and it works great. I wanted this device because it has an external antenna.

I ordered two boards. Both accept code and the GPIO pins work fine. However, you cannot use WiFi. As others have pointed out, to use an external antenna you must replace the 0 ohm resistor. However, none of my boards work with the built-in antenna. If your application doesn't require Wi-Fi, these Wi-Fi cards are great.