Wifi Booster

[Tywais]

Was researching WiFi antennas for our facility and stumbled across some interesting home brew sites. Lot's of them out there but this has an Asian twist by using woks or spaghetti strainers or other cookware.

Poor man's cookware antenna

USB WiFi Antenna

USB Wifi

[Veazer]

I did that last year at a friend's condo near Kad Suan Kaew. We found a big strainer at Kad Luang that was a little larger than average. It worked ok, but i think the USB wifi adapter we used had a rather low power output. It's amazing how many open access point are around.

[phaethon]

Really confuses the cookshop when you ask for a parabolic rice strainer...

[monty]

Aaah, wifi band radio waves!

Fun to play with but a bit of black magic. Your perfectly CAD designed super duper 200 dollar antenna has always the possibility to get massively outperformed by such a funny thing as a strainer with a USB wifi stick inside

I have seen massive distances covered with home made stuff!

[nikster]

Here is my main problem with these solutions: What do you connect the USB wifi stick to? Are there routers that can connect to these?

I am not even going to ask what's going to happen to this in a tropical rainstorm as is typical in this country. I have had two outdoor antennas break because moisture crept in over a period of approx. 2 years.

It's a fine single-machine setup though

Edited November 18, 2008 by nikster

[syd barrett]

Just a couple of questions about Wi-Fi radio waves:

Why does a parabolic dish improve gain?

Why not just extend the antenna with a very long wire?

Is an outdoor antenna extension better than an indoor?

Why do some (weak) signals come and go in the space of a few minutes?

[monty]

Just a couple of questions about Wi-Fi radio waves:

Why does a parabolic dish improve gain?

Why not just extend the antenna with a very long wire?

Is an outdoor antenna extension better than an indoor?

Why do some (weak) signals come and go in the space of a few minutes?

Black magic answers most of your questions

Bit more serious answers:

Parabolic antenna, quite simple actually, you fetch a lot of radio waves with a big dish, concentrate them and reflect them onto the actual antenna (the usb dongle). Bit like when the dish would be reflective, you could set a match on fire by holding it at the same spot as the antenna would be, where the energy is concentrated.

Extending with a wire wouldn't work on the frequency wifi works at, very high frequency means very short wavelength, all the cycles would just cancel each other out... Long wires worked with shortwave radios, where shortwave is today a misnomer, the waves were short for radio technology in those days, as wifi wavelength is around 1000 times shorter then shortwave radio

An outdoor antenna is better then an indoor one when the wifi point you are trying to connect to is outside. The very weak point of those high frequencies used by wifi, is that they have very little penetration power.Putting the antenna outside takes away one barrier, your wall. With plain standard wifi equipment and proper antennas, open air distances of several km can be covered, put one solid wall between and you'll see your distance reduce to maybe 100 meters.

Why do waek signals come and go? Mostly same reason, poor penetration power of those radio waves. Simply a leaf from a tree, moving in and out of the line between you and the transmitter can make the signal come and go. Or people walking around. Wifi radio waves don't like water, leaves have a high water content (and so do humans!) Same reason UBC drops out when thunder clouds are above. UBC uses even higher frequencies which like water even less, so a cloud can block of the signal...

And, always add the black magic influence

[Jockstar]

Just a couple of questions about Wi-Fi radio waves:

Why does a parabolic dish improve gain?

Why not just extend the antenna with a very long wire?

Is an outdoor antenna extension better than an indoor?

Why do some (weak) signals come and go in the space of a few minutes?

Black magic answers most of your questions

Bit more serious answers:

Parabolic antenna, quite simple actually, you fetch a lot of radio waves with a big dish, concentrate them and reflect them onto the actual antenna (the usb dongle). Bit like when the dish would be reflective, you could set a match on fire by holding it at the same spot as the antenna would be, where the energy is concentrated.

Extending with a wire wouldn't work on the frequency wifi works at, very high frequency means very short wavelength, all the cycles would just cancel each other out... Long wires worked with shortwave radios, where shortwave is today a misnomer, the waves were short for radio technology in those days, as wifi wavelength is around 1000 times shorter then shortwave radio

An outdoor antenna is better then an indoor one when the wifi point you are trying to connect to is outside. The very weak point of those high frequencies used by wifi, is that they have very little penetration power.Putting the antenna outside takes away one barrier, your wall. With plain standard wifi equipment and proper antennas, open air distances of several km can be covered, put one solid wall between and you'll see your distance reduce to maybe 100 meters.

Why do waek signals come and go? Mostly same reason, poor penetration power of those radio waves. Simply a leaf from a tree, moving in and out of the line between you and the transmitter can make the signal come and go. Or people walking around. Wifi radio waves don't like water, leaves have a high water content (and so do humans!) Same reason UBC drops out when thunder clouds are above. UBC uses even higher frequencies which like water even less, so a cloud can block of the signal...

And, always add the black magic influence

Never knew that.