Interested if anyone has used Honda Antenna with their own MiFi

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Dan Albrich

Well-Known Member
My RV has a winegaurd 360 antenna. Folks with the 360+ can buy optional wireless internet service. Anyway, with the winegaurd, you can also expose the antenna wires and just connect your own (i.e. cradlepoint, peplink, MiFi etc).

The Honda Clarity has an option via ATT to enable wifi hotspot in the car. That's well and good for those already using ATT, but not inexpensive to add separately. So the question is if anyone knows where the built-in MiFi lives, or more importantly, where the built-in Antenna lives so we might be able to connect our own MiFi or similar gear?

I did search a bit before posting but didn't find an answer. My interest was peaked as ATT has an offer for 3 free months (try before you buy) for new Hondas. I put in my VIN to see if I could try it and no gotty. Maybe because my 2018 Clarity is not a new Honda (of course).

-Dan

https://myvehicle.att.com/#/honda/learn?country=US&language=en&oem=honda
 
The clarity looks to have customized its ancient version of Android to not support running a "hotspot", and I've never heard of it supporting a GM Onstar-like system.
 
Yes, so a couple of answers: First, yup I was/am assuming the Honda Clarity is capable of creating a wifi 'hotspot' from the built-in ATT modem. And yes, maybe it isn't possible on Clarity even if willing to pay for it. My memory which is sometimes in error, was that one could order the hotspot feature just using the car.
The reason I believe the car has an ATT modem is where I live, only ATT works, but HondaLink does work (well as well as it does). So I can say pre-condition from the app on my phone, or click on 'find my car' and find it. So it definitely does have an ATT compatible cellular modem even if it just uses SMS on the back-end.

My objective is that I had a buddy with this feature (different make). He bought the hotspot feature and the built in antenna worked extremely well. Think staying connected in rural locations even when a normal cellular phone won't work. Back in the old analog days I'd use a 5W bag phone and a magnet mount antenna using the car as a good ground plane to get some coverage where seemingly there was none. So if it were the case that the car has a cellular antenna, it might be possible to connect to it. Standard cellular antenna type connectors can typically be adapted to what you need (SMA, TS9, FME, etc.).

What I do today is use cellular gateway router (i.e. GL.iNet Spitz AX, Netgear nighthawk etc) and an external mag mount antenna. But if there were a reasonable way to attach to a built in cellular antenna, that would be nicer.
 
Sorry to reply to my own thread. I just wanted to confirm that petteyg359 was correct. The Clarity doesn't have WiFi hotspot capability at all.

The confusion is a section the manual which describes connecting the car to your phone's hotspot feature. Apparently, if you really want to, you can run a browser on the android head unit and connect through your own smartphone hotspot. Given the speed of the built-in android tablet, I doubt that could be a good experience. So while our cars have some WiFi capability, it isn't what I thought, and not something I would want.
 
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