I would imagine that the stage lightning microcontroller is running a variant of ESP8266 or something similar where the "antenna" are actually thick traces on a

I would imagine that the stage lightning microcontroller is running a variant of ESP8266 or something similar where the "antenna" are actually thick traces on a circuit board (https://www.electronicwings.com/storage/PlatformSection/TopicContent/211/description/esp8266.jpg https://www.electronicwings.com/storage/PlatformSection/Topi...). This is obviously good enough for regular WiFi, but I would imagine this would complicate an attempt for wired WiFi tenfold.