Hello, World! This is my first post on the forum, and also I’m not experienced engineer.
So, I’m building a wireless button. The idea is simple: Pico acts as HID-device and sends some key-presses. I need it to be packed in a metal foot switch case(unfortunately, it’s the best and the fittest form-factor I can find around me). The metal is only 1mm thick, but as far as I know it will block all of the bluetooth signal I hope to receive.
Is there any way to connect an antenna to pico w? The footswitch has a hole previously used by a wire, it could be a nice place for the antenna to stick from. Or maybe there are some additional module along with a standart Pico which can help me? How should we treat pico’s wireless connectivity from the metall case?
I got an idea to drill a huge hole (~50mm) on the top of a pedal(width ~68mm) and then cover that with 3d-printed plastic, but for now it adds a lot of other problems (find a suitible drill head, make a 3d model, find place where I can print that, etc).
I have done a bit of digging into external antennas for the Pi Pico, and it seems like this is something the community has been interested in for a few years now. There doesn’t look to be many great workarounds for this, and it’s unlikely this will be officially added any time soon.
Are you set on using a Pico for this project? There are a few other wifi/Bluetooth microcontrollers with external antennas that should work in place of a Pico for this application.
The ESP32 platform comes to mind as a good alternative, as a fair amount of these boards come with a u.FL connector for use with an external antenna.
A stepped drill or cutter is best for any sheet material. I think these go up to 50mm. (I have one that gets to 30mm). Usually available from tool suppliers.
Cheers Bob
