[Gumstix-users] wifi antennas

[John R. <jo...@ru...>]

As I mentioned in the last day or two, I'm more of a software person 
than a hardware person, so I may come across as a little slow on some 
things here ... this particular subject being one of them.  The pictures 
of the wifi boards I've seen all show a thick linear antenna.

I seem to recall that there are also flat square antennas out there 
(specifically, I once ripped apart a wavelan (previous name of "orinoco" 
802.11b brand products) PCMCIA card and found a flat square antenna 
inside), but don't know much about them ... like how to make one if I 
can't find them pre-made and already using the same connector as the 
gumstix boards use for antennas.

Does anyone know of such a thing that would work with the gumstix 
boards?  I'm specifically thinking of something that is hopefully going 
to be less than 30mm x 30mm or so.

(to build on my last post, I'm thinking of something that would take up 
less than half of the area of the bottom of an altoids tin, so I could 
have one for wifi and one for a 3g/gsm/gprs board ... not sure what I 
would need to do wrt bluetooth though; but the idea would be to drill 
some small holes either on the bottom of the altoids tin, or on the back 
(under the hinge), and then secure the antennas to the bottom surface... 
then put some sort of protective layer over it all (and then maybe cover 
that protective layer with a decal that looks like the original tin 
bottom).)