TS9? Many of the most common modems used in Australia today have the TS9 connectors. Modems such as the Netgear Nighthawk M1, Nighthawk M2, Nighthawk M4, Huawei B818, and the Optus ZTE. It is important to be careful when connecting the TS9-connector, as it can easily be damaged. In this video, we show you exactly how to connect it and how to know it is properly connected.

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Video Transcript:

– How do you know your TS9 is completely connected?
I guess we’re gonna try and keep it simple, keep it real, but it’s actually just a, a genuine challenge. There’s nothing extremely positive I can say about TS9 connectors, other than they are, they are there to stay. And the modems we use them on, that I’m specifically aware of at the moment is, we know the Nighthawk, so the Nighthawk’s M1, M2, and M5, all use the same TS9 connectors. I have this camera next to me just to show they have TS9 connectors. The new ZTE modem that Optus uses on their system also has TS9 connectors. And then of course the original favorite was the Huawei B818, uses TS9 connectors. So they’re here to stay. We have these connectors on our website. They are basically 15 centimeter, little pigtails. The inside the Center conductor center pin is just really fragile. I can’t say anything else. And it’s fragile and you need to be careful when you insert it into a device. When you are one of those customers that want to insert it, remove it at times because you have to move it or something like that, just be careful. That’s kind of, it’s a very silly thing to say but it’s the only thing

I can say that is useful. The one thing though, that is quite, quite important to note I could use any of these one, these modems to show, when you insert it, don’t expect it to bottom at the bottom, basically, before you stop placing it in, when it makes contact, it makes contact. So I have a little pigtail here. I would plug it into a, just now, just M2 to show the mechanics. You just plug it in, you just, so know it’s centered, you push it in. See, I’m struggling here. So that’s good example of how it’s not actually correct. Plug it in and that’s it. Now, this is not a clean fit. It’s not bottoming against the, the base. So, but this is good enough. And one test that you could do, ’cause one question that I do get a lot is how do you know that it’s connected or not? A little trick that I have is when you connect it, the, the modems, and I would assume all of them do this, I know that the B818 does it, and I would assume the ZTE modem does it as well, I know Nighthawk does it, once it makes contact with the TS9 connector, it switches over to using this port. Now, if you don’t have an antenna connected to the port, like this, so you just have an open port, it basically will make it worse. So you will move from something that is working, if the thing in itself, you just connect the pigtail but you don’t connect something to the end of it, it actually will look really bad. Is it a silly test? Actually, no, it’s not because that’s one way you know, well, at least I know this connection is working. Now you can connect the antenna on this side and you have your connection going, but otherwise if you just have a full system connected in, you don’t necessarily know. I don’t know what more I could say about TS9.

I guess they are here to stay, hopefully at some stage, a manufacturer or a consortium of some sort will come up with a better idea, or they may all just decide to use the connector that I definitely like most, which is the SMA connectors for modems, such as on the Teltonika, there’s this, like I always do, a bit of marketing, RUT360 has SMA connectors on there. There it is just connected to that. No questions, no issues with that. Other than that, thanks for watching. Hope to see you on the next video.