Hi, I?ve tried myself searching withing products but there are unfortunately limitations:
mANTBox 2 12s is best solution for me, powerful, works 8-30V and that’s compatible with 12V battery (goes till 10,5V), but it doesn’t have SIM slot for LTE neither USB. I need then to buy an outdoor router with that, does it exist? Place an indoor one into a plastic box isn’t a good thing to do on summer.
mANTBox 52 15s is expensive but has USB port, I don’t know if I can plug there an USB dongle for LTE and be sure I can close that door, risk. Also, it works from 12V only, I need lower
BaseBox 2 has mini sim slot (it has already an LTE modem inside? Or should I buy it separately? I can’t be sure reading description) but doesn’t have antennas, I can see only 5dBi antenna accessories, does it works only with them? Can I mount antennas directly there or I need cables, brackets or any other thing?
It could be interesting have Basebox2+antenna 120°, but under antennas I see models only for 5GHz! https://mikrotik.com/products/group/antennas
Wi-Fi is a two-way street. So the properties of the client device are what limit the range. If they can have LOS to the mANT I’d image you’d pick from hundreds of meters. But I haven’t used the mANT’s myself.
In terms of LTE, using a separate wAPac might be an options as the goes down to 10V for your battery. That also has 2.4Ghz so maybe it have range close enough, or you can add pigtails to add whatever antenna you’d want (but again you fix clients like smartphones.
Absolutely right, it’s impossible to pretend a mobile phone with small antenna may be able to transmit signal too far away, even if a big receving antenna will help.
Anyway I need to clear why BaseBox2 come without antennas, and why it has only one solution (ACOMNIRPSMA) for that. There is any mANT 19S available for 2.4GHZ? If yes, which cables I also need to buy?
If not, can I mount ACOMNIRPSMA directly on BaseBox2 or should I buy anycase the cables? And how/where can I fix those antennas?
I’m a bit surprise Mikrotik makes the project so complicated
you’re over-complicating things.
forget basebox, antennas etc. and forget wap lte at any cost.
IF you want to go mikrotik, use a combination of sxt lte (works best out of all their lower cost lte devices) and connect the sxt2 on the port2 on the sxt lte.
sxt2 is “directional” but is actually covering a circle of about 100m and you can connect with phones. we use it for outdoor coverage of renting houses, put on the roof and it covers the entire yard around the house plus over 100m of the village.
The SXT also be good choice if just LTE is needed. I got the impression that both Wi-Fi and LTE were needed, but could be wrong. Since the SXT does not have any built-in Wi-Fi, you’d still that part too if so.
Also, I wouldn’t say SXT is ideal in all cases (and neither is the wAPac). e.g. SXT is not well tuned for low-band LTE & and Mikrotik seems to be focused on ARM… so buying new MIPSBE things may be limited now/future (e.g. no ZeroTier, no BTH – both useful with LTE)
Thank you for your really precious suggestions!
Yes, I need LTE and I need WiFi, to reduce costs the best would be a WiFi AP with LTE modem inside, or at least a MiniPCIE slot were put the SIM card, but those cards I suppose have really small antennas, so it could be better to switch to a device which has a specific antenna with good gain
https://mikrotik.com/product/sxt_lte6_2023
has lower cost than the others, I hope it’s effective. Unfortunately works from 12V, so I need to use 2 batteries and get 24V
The 2023 edition of the SXT has same modem as the new hAPaxLite, which people have seemingly been relatively happy with in my reading.
I don’t know how good cellmapper.net is for your area, but that’s always worthwhile to check to see the bands and antennas in your area. Not 100% accurate nor complete but worth a look.
You can also just use a small 24V step-up converter instead of 2nd battery.