Inside the Home Hub (non-technical!)

I had already experimented with a couple of home hubs and I had three of them. As this was my first hub and getting rather tired I decided to take it apart to see what was in there, particularly the antenna (or antennae as it turned out)

First make neat cross cut in the label (feel for the screw hole with a finger tip first). This version has plastic label with the hole nowhere near any important numbers, but you may destroy an important serial number or something, so make a note first.
A number 1 posidriver will take out that screw and leave the label almost intact (in case you want to put it back together!)
A similar screw is hiding under a self-adhesive patch.
Push this tab inwards.......
..... whilst working a similar blade, spoon and eventually a finger in the thin gap between the two halves. Keep a finger in the gap whilst pushing the tab in on the other side. You now have several fingers in the gap and if you want to reuse the hub, try to wiggle and poke the 5 clips (Shown below circled) using a long implement. If you are not worried about the state of the hub afterwards, just pull!
Well one bit fell out and several little bits broke off. It would be quite OK to clip the two halves back together and with the 2 screws it would be just fine to use again.
Here are the five ringed catches and a general view.

(Click pic to enlarge - this one is bigger than the other pics)

Note TWO antennae.
Now the grey wiggly one is easy, it's the wi-fi antenna.

But the one inside the casing connected to the mini co-ax marked Ant2, is that the DECT phone, or is it part of a MIMO pair?? Is it a FON antenna?

They both seem to come from the same shielded RF circuit, whereas the other RF circuit lower down seems to be definitely for the phone...
...because here's Ant3 - a little stiff piece of wire in an "L" shape which is obviously part of the phone setup.

If anyone can tell me what Ant2 is used for I would be interested (email address on Workshop Home page)
The main antenna is a simple piece of kit. You could replace it if you could find one with a similar mini coax plug. It looks identical to the plugs used on Laptop Wifi antennae - also usually in pairs in the laptop lid.
Inside the plastic cover is what looks like a centre wire about 35mm long and a hollow tube soldered to the coax shield braid.
Nothing else in here, so I presume it's a form of dipole.
The internal antenna looks different on the outside...

...but inside it seems to be very similar, though of a shorter length. If it is a MIMO pair it presumably covers different channels? If it is DECT then you would expect it to be a different frequency.

Jammed inside the plastic tube is another metal tube soldered to the coax in a similar fashion. There are cleverer people than me who can recognise the chipsets and work out where to hack into the registers - me I just like taking things apart!

I was more fascinated by the five polystyrene light fibres to shift the circuit mounted green LEDs to the right position!

Case is recyclable, but my council only recycles plastic bottles, so it's the bin for this old girl.




Job Done.