Improving the sound quality of the Wanscam HW0046

I thought I'd share this simple solution I found to improve the audio quality of my Wanscam HW0046.

This solution may potentially apply to other IP cameras suffering from similar audio interference.

The Wanscam HW0046 camera shares the same qualities as the HW0049, but delivers a higher 960P resolution.

I didn't feel it was worth reviewing based on that unique difference. The second reason was that I found the audio particularly terrible (lots of loud statics and interference from the camera itself) and I wanted to take some time to look at the cause.

I found out that the antenna itself was causing the interference and when I lowered it in horizontal position, the noise almost disappeared.

Looking for a more permanent solution I opened the HW0046 to have a closer look...

The black wire on the picture below is the antenna starting from the WiFi chip at the bottom and joining the external antenna casing on the opposite of the circuit board.

On its way, it flies over many components including the microphone connectors on the bottom.

After moving the wire in different positions while keeping the camera connected to check the noise, I found that the easiest way to reduce the interference was to make it travel via the other side of the board as far as possible from the microphone location. The white paste here is my quick'n dirty solution to keep it in place (sticky tack putty!). 

It's not nice (the casing will hide it anyway), and probably not as efficient as isolating or shortening the wire properly, but the result was already like night and day...a much better IP Camera already!