JF1980

I don't follow. Why would somebody connect a 5W radio to a 1W amp - that would clearly be a waste of time (and could possibly blow/damage the amp too). I also don't understand why you say the pineapple doesn't need one given the weak wlan0 perhaps you could explain?

I'm pretty certain the other devices don't all have bad antennas. Like I said wlan0 actually picks up a lot more with the standard antenna connected and my laptop easily picks up all my devices and even several of my neighbours APs with a strong signal. This is bad news, shipping the pineapple to Europe already cost 50% the cost of the device itself so making a return will cost me double. Very disappointing it seems like I would have been better off using a netbook with a couple of good usb wireless dongles.

Just received my Mk V which I ordered with the additional 9dbi antennas. To be honest I'm a very disappointed to find the power output on wlan0 is extremely poor in comparison to wlan1. Reading through forum posts it seems this is not an issue with my device but a flaw in the pineapple's design with wlan0 power being limited in hardware. Why they didn't just use the same chipset for wlan0 as they have for wlan1 I don't know.. Back to the query I have. I found that with the 9dbi antennas fitted I get a noticeable gain in power and sensitivity on wlan1 however wlan0 barely picks up anything - even sitting 10m from my AP it picks it up with a poor signal strength reading and fails to pick anything else. Performance on wlan0 is significantly better with the standard out-of-the-box antenna (although still nowhere near as good as wlan1). I have eliminated the possibility that one of the 9dbi antennas is faulty by swapping the two between wlan0/1 - result is the same. My only thought is that the low power limitation of wlan0 means it doesn't have enough grunt to drive the 9dbi antenna? I'm not an RF expert but this is the only logical conclusion I can come to. If so that raises the question of why Hak5 are selling these for use with the Mk V. As I said overall I'm very disappointed. I brought a MkV as it seemed like a great improvement to have two radios built in to one unit so no need for USB dongles etc. It seems like the reality is that actually to be useful I will need to use a USB dongle or an amplifier (so another power supply etc). Is this conclusion an accurate description of the current situation or have I overlooked something important / done something wrong?

So ignore me being a fool. I don't know why I thought the board was using 3.3v levels - I just read on the OpenWRT site that it uses TTL levels. Patched the serial connection directly to my arduino rather than via the 3.3v divider and boom it works. Better to have been cautious I guess, would have been really bummed if I blew the serial input!

I'm having a similar problem, did you find a solution? All I can think is that I may have accidentally blown the serial input with over voltage. I'm using a voltage divider circuit to knock down 5v UART to 3.3v, I worked the voltages out in theory but didn't actually measure it. I receive output from the hornet UART just fine.

You shouldn't have disclosed that. Now any would-be data thieves know which rainbow tables to put to work.

Is there an active download link?