Reply to: Wifi Antenna

Re: the door is kept shut and she pretends it doesn't exist.

> I've seen uses a "Pringles" Container

that one will be directional I think - a colinear is omnidirectional (ie same signal strength in all directions)

probably designed for rural area networking

*upd* just looked at the tin can design - yep those are for point to point not much use for roaming the home with a laptop.

Re: Pringles Antenna

These are better:
www.turnpoint.net/wireles...howto.html

www.wlan.org.uk has some good info

Re: the door is kept shut and she pretends it doesn't exist.

oi Spod, bet my SlashDot ID is more elite (ie smaller) than yours - just 4 digits, 9xxx.

Re: the door is kept shut and she pretends it doesn't exist.

You can make a colinear out of a length of coax shoved inside a bit of pipe (possibly lossy) or simply hung from the ceiling.

One of the designs I've seen uses a "Pringles" Container with the exposed Coax a certain distance from the tin reflector at the back.

I seem to remember reading something on Slashdot about distance records for 802.11(x)

Spod - In "Heath Robinson" mode!

Re: the door is kept shut and she pretends it doesn't exist.

It's the dust that keeps it all going.

Re: the door is kept shut and she pretends it doesn't exist.

I wish mine would,
she keeps going in and tidying up.
Then nothing works. :\

Re: cheers

Not any more. I stopped messing about with ham radio many moons ago. The "shack" was just the cupboard under the stairs.

My WiFi setup is all commercial - mind you if I could have got the connector easily I might have knocked something up - sadly I suspect Mrs. Fiddle would have objected though unless it was very unobtrusive.

In the main she is in favour of wireless networking simply because it is so much tidier away from the rat's nest which is the router - that lives in my "office" anyway which is pretty cluttered up with all sorts of hardware. She has a simple solution for the "office" - the door is kept shut and she pretends it doesn't exist.

Re: cheers

" most home-brew ain't pretty"

Fiddle, somehow I have this mental picture of your gaff as a real Heath Robinson paradise.

Re: cheers

The other thing to remember about any high gain omni is that the vertical pattern has to be reduced (the gain has to come from somewhere) so these may not work well in multi-story buildings.

Home-brew is the way to go provided you can get the connector - that way you can experiment with what works best at minimum cost. There are oodles of ham radio designs which can simply be scaled for the frequency you want (provided you select something relatively close). They will be far from perfect if you have no test gear but are unlikely to damage the low power transmitters in WiFi APs.

I'd try simple bodges to start with using a bit of stiff wire. The main problem would be making something that the little lady would allow in the house - most home-brew ain't pretty

You can make a colinear out of a length of coax shoved inside a bit of pipe (possibly lossy) or simply hung from the ceiling.

Re: cheers

Where's threaded when you need him?

Might be worth moving this topic into General. I'm sure we'd be very entertained by his wealth of knowledge on the subject.

Re: cheers

I was wondering how they got 12dBi gain and omnidirectional.

It's a colinear.

I remember buying one of those for 458MHz.

It was enormous, about 12 feet long.

And when pressed into service about a year later, didn't work.

Bummer.

Re: cheers

Good luck.

Are you using 11b or 11g - they both drop speed in chunks as the signal deteriorates but my personal experience found the usable range to be better with 11g (probably because it starts off faster)

I was toying with the idea of a better aerial on my AP/router (which is why I know about ebay and the connector) but at the time I only found stuff which you use to boost PCI card aerials by the simple expedient of putting one on the desk instead of hanging amongst all the cables at the back of the PC - they were all sma connectors so I didn't bother in the end.

cheers

I ordered a couple of cheapy 5db replacements off ebay. Will see how they work out.

Here's a professionally made one

www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/wireless/acessory/ant24120.htm#wp34329

It offers good gain but is unlikely to enhance your home (which is why I said anything of any size is impractical) being designed for outdoor freespace mounting it would not be likely to perform to specs if mounted indoors.

I would mention that I used to earn a crust designing telecoms aerials before moving into IT but nobody would believe me

Nah mike. Fiddle don't know diddly about radios. I know this because threaded (who tutored Marconi I believe) said that when it comes to radios fiddle is a real ham.