M6E Nano with antenna still too short range

Sensors NFC & RFID
1

I bought an M6E Nano from you with the external antennae expecting to increase the range from 1-2 ft to 8-16ft but instead got only about 3-4 ft range with large RFID tags.

I am running it at full power.

I was wondering if there are any active RFID tags that might help extend the range for this device out there…

Also wondering if there are any other options you can think of to help me build this project.

I basically need to be able to display by way of 4 lights on a door, which of 4 people are inside that office.

It needs to be a system that doesn’t require them to do anything besides maybe carrying a beacon or rfid tag in their pocket.

I tried making an fx beacon but the range even after cutting the antennae was much larger than the size of the office.

I’m failing with the RFID idea so I am wondering if you have any suggestions like maybe some sort of simple BLE setup that doesn’t require a smartphone to run???

If the RFID idea can work id rather stick to it since I already made the investment in that hardware.

2

did you remove the solder pad for the on-board antenna and connected the pad for the external antenna?

Which antenna did you buy?

How do you position the antenna ?

“full power”, Is that 2500 ? did you connect external power directly to the M6E Nano ?

Did you add a cooling block to the Nano (it will get hot soon and switch off to coool down)

Which RFID tags do you use ?

Maybe share the sketch and some pictures…

There are Battery Assisted tags (BAP), which a Nano can handle with the MercuryAPI on Windows or Linux, but I am not sure that these parameters are supported by the Sparkfun library.