forum

Hello!

We need your opinion about our new Z-Uno Shield. What housing would you buy together with this shield?

More details on the shield itself is available here: https://forum.z-wave.me/viewtopic.php?f ... 354#p73648

I am using this one:
https://www.conrad.com/ce/en/product/12 ... -201C-1-St

It fits the Z-Uno plus a small USB power supply.

This is also Gainta. On the picture it is 212 (http://www.gainta.com/en/g212.html) and 201 (http://www.gainta.com/en/g201.html).

The only reason why we use the three casings above is that we fit with holes in those cases.

Are you interested in such a Shield? Would one of those casings fit your requirements?

On a similar topic: A Z-Uno without headers would fit into an even smaller box. A bit like this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2000

I am taking the opportunity to ask the forum if anyone has tried to put the Z-Uno inside a metal enclosure.

How does aluminium or other metal affect the z-wave network range?

Here is one in aluminium as an example: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/general- ... s/5287044/

Dramatically Coverage should be around half a meter.

Solder a u.fl and remove the original antenna. This will allow you to attach a normal λ/2 or λ/4 antenna

Thanks, makes sense that the signal is blocked quite severly.

Forgive my ignorance when it comes to antennas. For the European freqency (868,4 MHz) it would mean a 17,3 or 8,6 cm antenna I think. Would it work if I just connect a cable between the antenna socket on the Z-Uno board and the metal enclosure? Would the enclosure have to have a length of
λ/2 or λ/4 for this to work?

I strongly soggest you to remove the antenna from Z-Uno and solder the u.fl connector. Once done, you can use standard u.fl to SMA cables and use a nice λ/4 SMA antenna. Also keep in mind that if you connect the enclosure to GND, the antenna will work even better (this is done if you install your SMA connector right in the metallic enclosure - the outer part of SMA connector is GND