Help with Antenna

[Billir]

Recently received 2 Moteino USB's and have just programmed one with the send.ino sketch and the other with the receive.ino sketch.
When I run the Arduino Ide monitor they run pretty much as one would hope.
The send says it is sending and the receive is listening.
Next testing the wireless - Soldered an antenna on each. (the ones provided)
Put the sending unit (TX) on a 5V wall wart (actually a Kindle USB charger) and the receive (RC) on my Linux computer.
The sending unit (TX) busily flashes away as it did after programming.
The receiving unit(RC), when viewed by the  monitor just says listening.
OK
Here is the strange part (discovered totally by accident).
If I touch the antenna of the TX unit within 6 to 8 " from the RC unit's USB cable the monitor shows data transfer that looks correct. 12" away nothing.
I have no idea how to trouble shoot this problem. I am reluctant to do a bunch of un soldering and re soldering because of the delicate nature of the device.
Does anyone have an idea as to how I can test:
- which antenna is bad (if that is the case)?
- if one of the the RFM69 is not working properly?
Thanks

[emjay]

Close up photos of the ANT soldering?

[Felix]

How exactly are you powering them each? Where is the 5V going?
When this happens it's usually a sign the RF chip is not working properly any more or has been biased incorrectly (voltage provided on the wrong pins or higher than acceptable voltage).
Can you also make sure you are using the latest RFM69 library and examples on Github? Can you load the Send/Receive examples from there if not already?
Any photos of the setup?

[Billir]

Thanks for your prompt replies.
In answer to Felix
Both units are powered through the USB port.
1 source is the USB 2 port on my computer second port is a USB wall wort (tried with 2 different ones) - a Kindle charger (4.9v 850 ma) and a USB hub (5v 2000 ma)
I got the libraries from the link on the
https://github.com/LowPowerLab/RFM69
https://github.com/LowPowerLab/SPIFlash
Got the zip files a few days ago
Got the Sketches from your Git site - viewed them as raw and copied them into separate .ino files
Installed the libraries into the Arduino IDE and complied then uploaded the scripts. The resultant of that is all seemed to work well.

How I soldered the antenna 's - stripped a bit of insulation of one end and pushed it through the ant hole  on the processor side and soldered on the other side.
all the joints feel  solid and look nice and shiny.
What say you.
PS you have many good informative videos on your site but there are is not one on the vital antenna attachment. Being a novice solder guy, I followed what I thought would like to have the antenna on the processor/usb side so I pushed the pin (antenna throught the hole and soldered the other side to keep things nice and clean on top. Good logic
Thanks   

[Felix]

Sounds like you did everything right, it's not rocket science. The antennas are not bad and in fact they will work without antennas at close range (that is how they are tested before shipping).
Make sure your settings match the hardware. Especially the is_RFM69HW setting and frequency.
Other than that I can't think of anything off the top of my head, I wonder if you made any progress or found anything new since your first post? Maybe trying a different environment or a different setup.

Maybe you had too much static on you although I doubt that should affect it. The radio experts might shed more light here.
If you still have issues and can't get it to work we can arrange for a return and see what's going on with these.

[Billir]

OK it is true.
You are magic!
I checked the setting you suggested and things are working very well now.
I am about to start on a bee hive monitoring system - checking for temperature moisture and weight of the bee hive(s). I have much to learn. The Moteino is a vital part of the project.

Thinking of solar with a RPI acting as a gateway connecting to the Internet via cellular network and pushing data to a powered web server for display.
The Moteino should be a very cost effective  device for collecting and sending data. I felt the XBee would cost to much and a bit too cumbersome.
There are plenty of people working on this type of project around the world, I have not seen any using the Moteino.
Have you heard of any?
Ok thanks again.

[Felix]

It's hard to say but I know a lot of people share their awesome projects by email and I encourage them to share in the forum as well, but not many do unfortunately ... I try to highlight the nice projects in the projects forum but I may miss some. Anyway it's great to know you are using it for bee hive monitoring, I think that's a really useful way to use Moteinos and I'm proud of it. I encourage you to log your progress or finished project in the projects forum and include pictures

I have created a shield for temp, humidity and atmospheric pressure based on this shield here. It provides very consistent temp/H/Pa readings. But it will be a while before I can mass produce it.