A natural part of a project like Sawppy the Rover is a long "to do" list. While its ever-growing nature might imply otherwise, things actually do get done when faced with motivation. For Maker Faire Bay Area 2019 my primary motivation was to get a wired controller up and running as backup in case of overcrowded radio frequencies. And now that I have a working (if imperfect) wired controller, I wanted to come back and tidy up the wireless side of the house.

After that initial episode of fighting on crowded 2.4 GHz band, Sawppy received a wireless router upgrade in the form of a dual-band Asus RT-AC1200. (Selected via the rigorous criteria of "It was on sale at Fry's that day.") Not only did this gave Sawppy greater range when operating on 2.4 GHz, it also meant Sawppy could operate on the 5 GHz band where there are far more channels to go share in crowded environments.

So that was good, and a wired controller backup is even better, but there's a neglected part that I wanted to address before taking Sawppy in front of a big crowd: when I initially hooked up that Asus router, I connected all the wires and placed it in the equipment bay. No mount, just gravity. I intended to integrate the router properly some day and today is that day.

Sawppy wireless router

I want to mount this to the rear of Sawppy above most of the equipment bay, because that's where real Mars rover Curiosity housed its communications equipment. Ever since I had a WiFi router at home, they seemed to have stayed roughly the same shape and size even though electronics have generally gotten smaller and more power efficient. So the first question I checked was whether the box is mostly empty space and we could transfer compact internals onto the rover?

Opening the lid did unveil some empty space, but not as much as I had thought there might be.

Sawppy wireless router opened

Furthermore, it doesn't look like the antennae are designed to be removable. They're firmly fixed to the enclosure, and their wires are soldered to the board.

Sawppy wireless router PCB

Seeing how unfriendly this design is to a transplant operation, I aborted the idea of extracting internals. We'll use the case as-is, starting with designing and printing a base for the router. I originally intended to fasten the base using original router enclosure screws, but changed plans to using M3 screws like rest of Sawppy after I dropped one.

Sawppy wireless router new base

This base has two dovetails which can then fit in brackets that clip onto Sawppy's extrusion beams.

Sawppy wireless router mounted

And voila! A rigid mount for my wireless router rigidly mounting it to Sawppy chassis instead of letting it bounce around in a tangle of wires like I've been doing the past few months. This is much more respectable to present to other attendees of Maker Faire Bay Area.

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