I’ve got GL-AR150 from aliexpress more than month ago and it worked for about 10 days before something happened with wifi and it can’t receive well anymore.
TX signal is still strong, but RX only about 40-50% when client is right next to the router. If client moves away more than 1 meter the connection drops.
At the time it happened there was another wifi interface running using USB card TL-WN722N, so is it possible that AR9331 somehow disabled LNA because of very strong signal from USB card? This seems logical to me as I can’t imagine why would there be a hardware malfunction.
Also if I compare RX signal strength from a client device, the AR9331 has about 40dB weaker reception than TL-WN722N which is exactly the same amount of signal loss I have with my other router that is not yet fully supported in openwrt trunk and has no LNA working at the moment.
yes, tried changing channels for both radios, then disconnected and removed USB card completely, performed factory reset, flashed original firmware and reset device. still weak reception.
ultimately i tried erasing flash chip to program it again and got brick because stupid u-boot didn’t start webserver properly (should’ve used tftp and serial console).
i’ve unsoldered flash and connected another chip from tplink router, was able to flash everything back but the wireless issue remains. tried to measure resistance of inductors in tx/rx circuit right before antenna connector, got measured about 1.2Kohm, is that expected value?
Can you just tell me which component did you measure,if you measured the component L21,you should get a 0 ohm.
Maybe you can take a picture of your PCB,let us have a look at it.
Europe. unfortunately shipping back from here would cost almost as a new device. I’m thinking to hook a device to my network and give you remote access to check if you can figure out what happened.
Hi
FYI.
I am experiencing something like this on my router as well but it happened after I was testing different antennas on it without turning the router off first. I think I have damaged the antenna circuit on my router by not disconnecting power before the antenna swap.
Did you perhaps also play with the antenna without turning power off first?
I have not tested TX on mine, only RX and I am down to 40% now after playing with the antenna and before when router was “not” damage I was up at 74% (my AP router is connected to is on a different floor)
No, because I kept the original antenna all the time. I had two situations few years ago with old realtek AP where reception got weak in similar way as with this one: first time it went out by itself, second time it was running without antenna for about an hour at 15dBm output power. That’s when I figured out it’s not good to run it without antenna. But as you can see both still fail even when you have antenna connected.
@psyborg, if this is a problem of hardware, remote investigation seems less useful.
Could you send us email so that we can check what we can help. Also you are buying from Aliexpress and we need to know the seller. It is easier to include photos etc.
@psyborg Hi,I saw your comment at our forum.What can I do for you? we are very sorry for disappointing you,these months we are having many problem on customer support.We will do our best to make our product works well and hope you give us more advice.
About your AR150 problem,we will send a new one to you.our colleague will contact you as soon as possible.