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Old 03-27-2020, 10:27 PM   #1
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Prewired King Wifi

Ok everyone...I see that my Camper is prewired for King Wifi, but there are no instructions as to if there is an antenna at the other end of the wire. Where does the other end, end up at? Does that (prewired) mean that all I have to do is get a router/repeater and hook it up? What or where is the wiring diagram for the prewired wires... It almost doesn't make sense. I saw a link to the King products, but it showed very little info about "how" to use it. I get it that the camper already has wires (hence Prewired) in it for wifi, but am I missing something? Any and all info would be phenomenal right now..
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Old 04-08-2020, 11:36 AM   #2
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I was also was trying to figure that out. I believe all it means is there is a wire run from the roof to the wall plate marked in the camper.

You would need to purchase something like the "king swift ks1000". If you search that you will see it comes with a router and an external antenna. If you notice the router has a larger third antenna. That third antenna is for connecting to a wifi network (like a public campground network). The router then uses the other two antennas to serve your own private wifi network for inside your camper while using the campground network as the "internet" connection. To get a better connection to the campground network you can remove the larger third antenna from that router connect it to the cable included with your campers "prewired wifi". I believe the other end of that wire is in the bottom part of the TV antenna on the roof on my camper. You can then mount the external antenna included with the "king swift ks1000" kit to the roof and connect it to the cable hidden under the tv antenna.

your device <---yourwifi---> king router <---cable that is the "prewire" ---> antenna mounted to roof <---campgroundwifi---> internet

The idea is you can get a better connection to campground wifi with an antenna on your roof and your devices get a better connection to your own wireless inside the camper. It also means the wifi prep is essentially just a cable that is run from that wall plate to the roof.

Generally the wifi in most campgrounds are poor and you might be better off with a cellular hotspot.
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Old 04-08-2020, 03:51 PM   #3
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Here is a shot of the base of my antenna. It looks like the oem prewire enclosure.

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Old 06-18-2020, 05:11 PM   #4
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At least you have a wire. All we got was a cover plate that said it was pre wired. No wires to be found!
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Old 06-21-2020, 07:54 AM   #5
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Funny enough I looked under the antenna on the roof recently and it looked like it was missing but I did eventually spot a little something under part of the plastic tv antenna mount. I needed a tool I didn't have to grab it. I will be back up there soon to mount a wifiranger cellular modem. If it is there I was planning on using it to pull the cable I need for the wifi ranger.

Haven't tried to find the other end yet. It's not attached to that blanking plate.
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Old 07-04-2020, 09:54 AM   #6
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Installed a Wifiranger Teton this week. I did find the pre-wire cable. The placement of the antenna vs the hole in the roof made it impossible to retrieve so I drilled an opening that i was able to fish the cable out of.

I used that cable to pull the wifiranger cable and tied into the DC power for the sound bar. I added a small switch to the blanking panel that said "Wifi Ready" to turn it off and on.

I was able to use the king wifi prewire hole location on the TV antenna. A PG9 cable gland fits well.

The actual prewire cable is a RG58 cable with connectors I am not familiar with. They maybe RPTNC Plug(Reverse TNC male) on the roof and RPSMA Plug (Reverse SMA male) but don't trust me. I will attach pictures. The red end is the roof end. Not sure why the pics are not right side up...
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Old 07-04-2020, 10:39 AM   #7
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These pics are so helpful

Did you get a "bundle" with an inside router too?

Have you used the teton yet? Results?
I stayed up to the we hours last night reading and reviewing and I'm still a bit confused.
To LTE or not LTE.


Cheers
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Old 07-04-2020, 02:13 PM   #8
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No just the external unit. Coverage seems fine inside so far. I have a trip next week where I will get some more practical experience.

For me LTE was the point of adding it. Park wifi has almost always been poor and unreliable. The cat4 modem supports 600mhz band 71 which is interesting and I currently have a Google Fi (tmobile) sim in it. I can have all the devices connected to the camper wifi and easily change the internet source from campground wifi, the LTE modem in the wifiranger or tethering through my phone on AT&T.

Some disadvantages I see are having to get on the roof and open the enclosure to swap to a different sim. Hopefully it is designed for it but that enclosure on the roof has got to get insanely hot and I hope that doesn't result in unreliable and flakey behavior of the hardware. Its not going to be high speed but all i need is 5-10mbps which I seem to be getting.

We don't full time and don't rely on it for more than entertainment. If I did I think i would go with an option that had antennas on the roof and the system in the RV, something with multiple sims and a much higher category LTE modem. Pepwave has some interesting options. For the price I think the Teton is hard to beat though.
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Old 07-09-2020, 09:46 PM   #9
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I have a late 2020 Salem 30KQBSS and its got "pre-wired for king wifi" written all over it. Stickers on the side and on a plate in the entertainment center. I removed the plate to find NOTHING behind it. Just a hole. How exactly is this pre-wired for king wifi? On the roof there is a King antenna that is white and circle in shape, but I don't know if this is a TV or Wifi antenna. Wish this camper came with an owners manual. I need to get a Wifi extender and I was hoping to save some money on an antenna if the one on the roof is in fact for Wifi. Any tips on what's going on here?
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Old 07-10-2020, 09:56 AM   #10
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on my roof is this a KING TV antenna or WIFI antenna? Very confusing.
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Old 07-10-2020, 01:35 PM   #11
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Following because we have the same on our 2021 Salem
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Old 07-12-2020, 06:08 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DeanHensler View Post
on my roof is this a KING TV antenna or WIFI antenna? Very confusing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by glwhitetail View Post
Following because we have the same on our 2021 Salem
The antenna on the roof is just for TV and AM/FM radio not wifi. The wifi prep is just a cable that runs from under the TV antenna to somewhere behind the TV. It is not attached to the panel that says pre-wired for wifi it is lose back behind the TV. My original reply explains how the wire can be used with a King product that includes a router for inside and an antenna to be installed on the roof, the cable is there to connect those two components.
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Old 07-12-2020, 06:34 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by leroygfy View Post
Did you get a "bundle" with an inside router too?

Have you used the teton yet? Results?
I stayed up to the we hours last night reading and reviewing and I'm still a bit confused.
To LTE or not LTE.


Cheers
We went to a higher-end campground Wednesday through Saturday. It was empty during the week and filled some by Friday night but not to capacity. The T-mobile and AT&T coverage were both poor so I did not use LTE. They did have a solid wifi setup. I paid the $10 for three days of premium wifi that worked well for streaming until Friday night when it would not work. Their bandwidth must have been overwhelmed. I am guessing it was going to stay that way through the weekend.

The signal from the wifiranger was solid inside the camper and at neighboring sites. It was plenty hot and it worked fine as far as I could tell.

At home I did two speed tests. One on my wifi and one on LTE. Wifi was 12.3 down/8.4 up and LTE was 6.7 down/.8 up.
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Old 07-27-2020, 04:14 PM   #14
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Mofi

After much deliberation I went with the MoFi4500 4GXeLTE V2.
We have AT&T so I just ordered a new sim card ($40/month unlimited)
We used it this weekend without any problems. The kids are thrilled and my wife will be able to work remotely.

I have not done a speed test test but if there is any lag I don't notice it.
Antenna(s) on router are working fine inside the RV.
So far so good.
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Old 08-31-2020, 07:27 PM   #15
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Hi there! I am trying to install Swift antenna; my prewire base doesn’t look like the one in the install instructions but does look the white disk shaped thingy pictured above except it’s black. The instructions say to remove 4 screws but the only set of 4 screws I see are holding the entire base in and have sealant on them so that doesn’t seem like a good approach. Did anyone who has installed remove the one screw on the neck to feed the wire in? I started doing that but it seemed like no matter how much I loosened it, the screw just spun left but never came out so I stopped and figured I would ask for help. Any guidance you all can provide would sincerely appreciated. Thanks in advance!
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Old 10-10-2020, 10:43 AM   #16
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My experience is that the white circular antenna on the roof is wired to the cable behind the labeled plate on the wall behind the tv. If you buy a kingconnect WiFi extender 1000 all you need to do is plug it into the electric outlet and connect the cable to the extender. The extender comes with an antenna but it’s better to use the antenna on your roof.
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Old 10-10-2020, 10:48 AM   #17
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Also you really don’t want the extender behind the tv so I drilled through into the pantry and hung it there with Velcro. Took 5 minutes. Also the camper is wired for rearview camera and that was also a breeze. Cable was right there. Powers with headlights
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Old 10-14-2020, 11:22 AM   #18
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the prewire roof end connector is ...

After several emails with King Connect and research I have determined that the connector on the roof end of the prewire cable is an SMB female. I have found some adaptors on amazon and will be using this cable to install an LTE antenna on the roof. Save making a new hole by using the existing cable.

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BTW - if you dig around behind the cover plate with the prewired stickers on it you will find the inside end of the cable. The other end is inside the antenna on the roof and can be fished thru the punch on the side of the King Connect TV antenna. Simple to open the antenna on the roof and find it.
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Old 11-06-2020, 09:35 PM   #19
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I found the cable on both ends

I follow this forum because I used to have a Forest River but recently got another brand of trailer that was pre-wired for King, which I thought was great because I was going to hook up a few different types of antennas including a passive omni-directional and a WeBoost.

The first difficulty was finding the wires. After removing the plate inside the camper I had to dig around with my fingers until I found the wire and it was a real pain to get through but eventually after about 10 minutes I got it.

Then I removed the base of the antenna but didn't see the 2nd cable. I pulled the TV antenna cable up slowly hoping the other cable would be attached and after about 1.5 feet I found the cable - attached to the TV antenna cable with a small amount of electrical tape.

Then I saw a connecter I'd never seen before and I eventually found an adapter. I can't remember what it was but @offwegoRV has identified this as SMB Female.

I mounted my passive omnidirectional antenna on my roof and excitedly connected its SMA cable (through the adapter) to the King cable and checked my results on the status screen for my Netgear Nighthawk 4G LTE modem. I checked things like the RSRP, RSRQ and signal quality and in the end the signal was much worse than with no external antenna.

I decided to instead run my 25' pre-installed antenna cable and connect it to a 25' extension I already had and the signal was fantastic. This means the King prewire cable is either the crappiest extension cable I've ever seen or it's 75 ohms instead of the 50-ohm cable I needed for my antenna.

If you're running some kind of amplifier like a WeBoost system, the loss in the cable because of the mismatch in resistance might not be a big deal, but when you're trying to use a passive antenna that has a 50-ohm connection, it's just going to make your signal suck as badly as mine.

I hope this helps.
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Old 01-25-2021, 09:54 PM   #20
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Pure gold... was lurking and following. Bought the same adapter and tackled an external antenna for my Mofi 4500. The PG9 cable gland and the SMB to SMA adapter plus a 6 inch sma jumper was all i needed to run my external antenna for my Mofi 4500. I mounted the modem/router behind my tv just below the King plate. There was not much cable to play with so had to get the jumper. Since i don't use over the air TV and pretty much gathered that the King circular antenna is junk, I just ran the cable out of the bottom of the mount as shown above and just bent the bracket for the antenna and screwed the bracket to the bottom of the disk. Picture to follow. I just added a 5dbi omni antenna and improved the signal to the Mofi. From my driveway, went from -102db to -90db from the antenna mounted on the router inside. Not bad. Would love a higher gain or yagi but this gets the job done. Will have to see how it goes on the road. But running it outside definitely worth it. Thanks for all the heavy lifting on this one! I appreciate it!
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