Comment by avianlyric
Comment by avianlyric 10 months ago
> If you lowered the drop ceiling anything would be less conspicuous on the inside.
The product is for fitting into existing buildings, with minimal impact. Being inconspicuous is a secondary concern, it only needs to be inconspicuous enough to not be obvious. Drop the ceiling on an entire floor to hide would not be low impact.
As to a plastic white box, sure you could do that. But it would be a plastic box that contains some kind of antenna on a rigid substrate. At which point you might as well just use glass as the substrate, and get rid of the extra enclosure, and manufacturing fiddlyness involved in assembly.
The cost of a glass antenna vs one housed in a plastic box is going to be negligible compared to overall cost of the installed equipment. At that point you might as well just use glass, simplify the construction and install process, and get a product that’s less visually distracting as a bonus.
PCBs and antennas in general are cheaper than glass. I think that's why this is considered special. Also note that they can do UWB and all sorts of other things. It's not like these glass antennas are using a substrate that already exists, they're just mounting something with exposed wires to a semitransparent 1ft/3ft piece of expensive specialty glass. Any change they have to do to the low e windows, they have to do for both.
The idea that a plastic enclosure is difficult, expensive, or fiddly, is kinda hilarious. Maybe you'd like your monitor or laptop or microwave oven to have it's fiddly enclose removed, but I don't think it's wise.