I must be losing it. I read the title as "wife repeater," and thought this was a divorce, remarriage thread.
I must be losing it. I read the title as "wife repeater," and thought this was a divorce, remarriage thread.
250 ft is a pretty good sized radius for WiFi. I don't think a 3dB gain antenna is going to do it for that. You're really going to need something more like a Yagi pointing at where your laptops are to cover that 250 ft. The antennae on the laptops aren't going to have much, if any, gain, so it all has to be on the hub side, and you'll have to give up omnidirectional to get it. A 3dB vertical omnidirectional antenna might get you 100' of reliable WiFi. Maybe.
Ok, thanks. I think what I'll do is get a 7dbi omni (cripes, they're only $5 on Amazon) and then scavenge a 5dbi omni off of an old router at work and try them both.
If the 5dbi doesn't reach all of our campers, I'll try the 7, knowing that it might limit my coverage in my own camper (since I'll be about 6' away from the box). If all else fails, the family can just bloody come to my place for wifi this summer and I'll try a directional next year.
One other benefit (hopefully) is that the second antenna is going on my patio under the awning of the camper (there is an F-connector out there which I'll adapt to SMA). That means it will be right in front of a 32' x 10' wall of aluminum and hopefully direct a bit more down toward the family but still bleed enough into my camper.
mr2s2000elise said:I must be losing it. I read the title as "wife repeater," and thought this was a divorce, remarriage thread.
I don't want a repeat of my last wife. That didn't end well. Her antenna had very little gain.
Another question since I thought about it...
In looking for SMA antennas, I found some with RP-SMA and just SMA... the "RP" meaning it doesn't have the center pin. What's up with that? I thought antennas had to have two poles to work
Curtis said:Another question since I thought about it...
In looking for SMA antennas, I found some with RP-SMA and just SMA... the "RP" meaning it doesn't have the center pin. What's up with that? I thought antennas had to have two poles to work
RP-SMA is "reverse pin" ie, a female connector on the inside, but the same screw-on on the outside. I ordered a batch of 6 a while back and got 5 regular and one RP in the batch. Unlabeled of course.
You *may* be able to take a small length of paperclip and place it in one side or the other if both are RP to allow the 2 female connectors to make contact. I have not tried that, but it would work in theor, as long as it's clean metal.
Anything workable for a cheap repeater to use at work? Work removed the main unit from my work area and now I barely get any WiFi from the other unit as it’s basically on the other side of the building. Now, I am burning data from my cellular at a rapid clip. The WiFi is unsecured if it makes any difference. Less than 50 from my work area is a full strength signal. Anything to make it work? IT has no plans to replace the main unit for my work area.
Sorry for the thread jack Curtis.
Sine_Qua-Non, do a search for DDWRT. It's an open source firmware that works on some repeaters and routers. You can install it on a router and reconfigure it as a repeater. Then the further away you put it from the source, the more gain you'll need on the antenna.... and make it directional.
You can also scavenge goodwill stores and the like for a $5 repeater box. They are suprisingly common. People buy them expecting miracles without really knowing how they work.
There are also some cheap plug-in boxes for like $17 on amazon that everyone says work great. Put them halfway between your office and the wifi source and give it a shot.
Good news on my end... my Netgear WR2000rpt got hacked successfully yesterday. I pulled it apart, desoldered the PCB antennas and put my own RG317 pigtails to SMA bulkheads in the case. Connected, tested, configured, works great with the two 5dbi antennas I put on it. Waiting on my Yagi in the mail and we'll see how it does when I get to the lake.
If you don't see an update from me in a week, it didn't work 
Bam. Best I could get with the Yagi was 30% signal, but it worked. I'm now posting to y'all on my new wifi setup.
Thank you all for your help.
Never thought I would get lessons in distributed WiFi on grassroots motorsports....I think that's pretty cool. :-)
Ok, update.
The Yagi is working well. My signal is greatly improved, but I'm still not getting a stable link. I'm shooting through the trees and every time someone coughs, the breeze blows, or the moon phase changes, I lose connection. I get perfect connection from my equipment to the repeater, but the repeater can't get an IP from the source when the signal drops below a certain threshold. It's the same problem I was having before, but the Yagi has at least made it much better. In past years, I might go days without wifi. Now I at least have wifi half the time. Seems to come and go (on the average) about once an hour or two.
Did I go too much gain with the 25dbi Yagi? Did I make it line-of-sight only? I can't find anywhere with line of sight. Would I be better off with more traditional directional like a dome or flat panel so it picks up what filters through the trees?
Curtis said:Ok, update.
The Yagi is working well. My signal is greatly improved, but I'm still not getting a stable link. I'm shooting through the trees and every time someone coughs, the breeze blows, or the moon phase changes, I lose connection. I get perfect connection from my equipment to the repeater, but the repeater can't get an IP from the source when the signal drops below a certain threshold. It's the same problem I was having before, but the Yagi has at least made it much better. In past years, I might go days without wifi. Now I at least have wifi half the time. Seems to come and go (on the average) about once an hour or two.
Did I go too much gain with the 25dbi Yagi? Did I make it line-of-sight only? I can't find anywhere with line of sight. Would I be better off with more traditional directional like a dome or flat panel so it picks up what filters through the trees?
Yagis are directional so make sure each one is pointed at the other end of the long-distance link. If you have one on only one end, get one for the other. You don't have to worry about "too much gain." Do try to avoid having solid objects in the path of the long-distance link, especially dense ones.
No option for a Yagi at the source. It is a nano transmitter at the Lodge and not my property. I'm using it with permission, but no option for changing the source. It's kinda like asking to paint your neighbor's Tesla blue because it would match your house. Not to mention, putting a Yagi down there pointed at mine would screw everyone else out of their wifi unless they were in range of my repeater.
My issue is quite plainly obstacles. The trees are so dense that line of sight is a joke. I've tried going higher and lower, left and right, and even thought about stringing some RG6 across the township road so I could get line of sight.
For right now I disconnected the Yagi and put on a unidirectional 9 dbi and it is weak but at least seems to hold an IP for longer than it takes for a leaf to move.
Got a pic of the Yagi you bought? It should easily out perform a omnidirectional antenna. You have to aim it by signal strength, not eyeball.
The Yagi's I bought were built wrong. I fixed them.
I've seen yagis do 15 miles line of sight, if off the shelf repeaters don't do it for you. This was in 1999, also..
That running a wire idea may have some potential. If you can get your end of the long-distance link closer, you'll improve the signal. You could also use a solar-powered repeater device in a tree but that could get expensive.
If you use a giant TV satellite dish, you can get a link so long that you'll have to elevate the endpoints to prevent the curvature of the earth from getting in the way, saw that done between mountains in an experiment by a South American university.
Dr. Hess said:Got a pic of the Yagi you bought? It should easily out perform a omnidirectional antenna. You have to aim it by signal strength, not eyeball.
The Yagi's I bought were built wrong. I fixed them.
I'll get you a photo. One of the problems is that the only signal strength meter I have at my disposal is the built-in firmware with the Netgear repeater. It shows a list of APs and their strength along with a "refresh" button. I have to go up the pole, guess at where the transmitter is through the trees, mom hits "refresh" and we wait 30 seconds for it to update. Then I adjust a hair and wait again. After a half hour I heard her say "30%" and I left it at that.
What I should do is get a repeater or router that can accept DDWRT and that might help things a bit. Does it have a live signal meter?
Here are some shots.
Three show the Yagi, and one shows the sightlines of where it's pointed. In the sightline photo, you can see the extensive foliage as well as the hill. Through the trees you can make out a vaguely brown shadow... that's the roof of the lodge where the transmitter is. I would estimate the antenna is about 900-1000' from the source.
Someone linked to one above, but they were out of stock
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