Theoretically, the proper distance from the antenna directly backward to the reflector should be some odd multiple of 1/4 wavelength. At 2.4GHz one wavelength is 12.5cm. So, the distance between the antenna and reflector would be about 3.125cm. The distance directly sideways and directly up and down from the center of the antenna to the reflector (if the reflector happens to be that big) should be the same odd multiple of 1/2 wavelength (6.25cm), ideally.
@@krollpeter By vertical, I guess that you mean perpendicular. The answer is no. The main improvement that could be made would be to change the shape of the reflector. It's a bit tricky though since he has two radials instead of just one. The bowl really didn't give a lot of improvement over the flat reflector.
@@noncounterproductive4596 I meant perpendicular. Thanks for understanding ... and even responding to me after 6 years! I did try different reflectors and styles. There is only a gain for very weak signals. For connections of medium qualities or better there is an improvement in numbers, but that difference disappears into insignificance in terms of speed. For me it did not make a difference in speed, if I have -41 or -36 dB.
@@krollpeter Yeah I suppose that once the signal is good enough to get the digital information across consistently any additional strength doesn't really matter. I ended up buying a large parabolic reflector wifi antenna, and a 3W wifi adaptor to use with it. I have seen that there are also kits for turning a DirecTV (or similar) dish into a wifi beam antenna.
Put 3 pieces of mirror on the reflector shine a light at it. Where they focus is the focal point. Use that to locate your antenna inside the dish reflector. Hope this helps you! 73 Jimmy, ARRL TS, WX9DX
well done. I had some spare Directv dishes and took the same TP link and mounted it at the focal plane...zounds...it took a little bit to play with but worked fine business WB5MZO
Sorry trying to get the family up and make breakfast at the same time as sending this. I got tired of using a bowl because it would get bumped. So what I did was I went to an apartment complex and asked if they had any apartments that had a satellite dish that wasn't using the dish. I was given 3. Take your wifi adapter and mount it in the tip. And extend the USB cord with a 25 ft one. Now mount the dish out side where it won't bet bumped like on the roof or wall. Point it and you can get about 3 miles of range. I used mine and pinged the public library 2 1/2 miles away and it was a good connection.
Or even better, get a wifi router hacked with dd-wrt on the roof and have it take the wireless and convert it back to ethernet, then tag another wifi access point (Ubiquity Networks AP-LR) and rebroadcast the neighbors Wifi into the shop.
I keep stumbling across your videos. I love your breadth of interests and practical solutions to problems. This is exactly what I wanted to know to help with my shop. Thanks for doing all the detail work and sharing! 👍
Very interesting attemp! I don't know if you have updated the design. Ideally, your dish should be parabolic. Since you made a lathe, you should be able to make a wood antenna base. To optimize the signal enhanement, ping is a good method but indirect. You should be able to see the signal strength in dB with the driver and software come along with the adapter.
Haha, that's pretty cool. I also found it a funny coincidence that I just moved to a shared flat recently, and had a desktop with me that had no wifi adapter. I'm on a budget, so I searched for highly rated adapters that were cheap, and I wound up buying the exact same TP-LINK adapter used in this video. It is quite excellent!
Wavelength at 2.4Ghz is 5.92" so that distance is important to create a standing wave. A wave can't "stand" if it can't fit between the antenna and the reflector. Doing half the distance will invert the standing wave causing destructive interference --- the more ya know, cheers :)
That is VERY cool! My dad and I made a horizontal polarized high gain 2.4GHz antenna specifically to get a better signal. It's absolutely amazing how a better antenna, or reflector, can help make something work better. Great work!
Good solution! altough a directional antenna is not that pricey, and probably more stable. but you need a repeater for those. Anyway, i'm sure youre aware of all that. It's nice to see it works that well!
Esto sí que es tecnología punta!!!! Lo que hace el ingenio cuando se necesita. No descartamos ponerlo en práctica nosotros en algún momento. Enhorabuena y gracias por compartirlo
Man I love your DIY attitude to everything! :) Fits very well with my mindset. Subscribed. Cheers.
8 років тому+1
THANK YOU! I hadn't thought of this. I have a fancy commercial-grade (Cradlepoint) WiFi+cellular access point for my motor-home, but it has no external antenna port for its WiFi-as-WAN radio and I'm lucky to get 1mbps throughput from the house on a good day. Now there's hope again. ;)
I've been trying to stream HD video from my PC (office) to the living room (probably... 25 feet away? Awkward straight line through walls, diagonally though). I bought a much longer antenna for my PC, and it helped my range a lot, especially considering the antenna is still basically against the wall, pretty low (average large PC tower on the floor). Previously I always had the luxury of hard-wiring my connection, and I could do that now under the floor, but I also don't want to drill too many holes in the nice wood flooring at this rented house. I have often thought of solutions such as the ones presented in this video, but I'm sure it's nearly as extreme as your issues here, at all. Regardless, I admire your aptitude and work, taking a problem and turning it into a fun solution. Cheers Matthias, -Alec
Nice! I once heated a CD to make it more pliable to form a reflector similar to this. It was just enough to keep me from being disconnected. Was very make shift as all my belongings were in another state after a move and really had to make do with limited materials.
I bet if you got some metallic spray paint and just coated the surface of the bowl, you'd get even better signal collection. That creased up foil will cause a bunch of dispersion. Good job though. I like that anything can be looked at as a problem to be solved and that you come up with solutions and post them!
For sound amplification, I place my phone in a bread pan, and I can hear the music on my phone from farther away. This is somewhat related to what you were doing.
Put the antenna outside the window. Unless specified otherwise, window glass has a metallic content that will attenuate the RF by a significant amount.
the wave length of 2.4 GHz signal is 12.5 cm. The space from the reflector should be multiple of 6.25 for maximum performance (so both directions make 12.5).
Also try looking up a wifi parabolic reflector template. Just need some paper, tape and aluminum foil. I used one during my deployment and it worked great.
Good idea. I have a similar problem with the wifi adapter in my room, but I never tried to make a reflector. I guess it can't hurt to try, looks like it worked for you. Nice video.
As far as I can tell, the problem is not the ping to the router, it's fast enough, mostly a few miliseconds (generally 1 or 2). I suspect that the real problem is interference with other signals and/or signal attenuation, since the router is a few walls apart even though it's not "far" away. I bought a new adapter, one that has two antennas and more gain, but it does not seem to have improved that much. Guess I'll just have to wire utp to the room and get it over with ;)
I liked this. you might note for next time the focal point for a hemispherical reflector is 1/2 the radius your bowl is not a full hemisphere so you were far to deep inside the bowl on the video.. It might have made it quicker to find the sweet spot. and if the diameter was more than 10 wavelengths that would increase your range to about two miles...
It would be the size of an umbrela. Even so I am not sure that so much delay between reflections and direct signal would give a respectively better SNR. The rest just seem wrong since a hemisphere is not the right shape for a reflector, also the focal point must be specific quarters of the wavelegth from the reflector on the back, so there is no way to calculate in a random bowl the best position (since it is not build in the right shape).
ntomata0002 Ha,Ha I was designing microwave systems in the late 1970's and training microwave communications technicians in the 1980's and hemispherical reflectors and parabolic reflectors were no stranger to my slide-rules's answers. Microwave is analog not binary and I am apparently more of an expert than you in some technologies. (Although I was a teacher of PC service and repair for 15 years also.)
Dennis Miles You should understand that today’s simulation tools give us a far better understanding of how electromagnetic radiation propagates compared to the limited knowledge we had around 70s. I have designed and build a lot of antennas in the 2.4GHz band, so expertise is no issue. What do you mean by “microwave is analog”? The network transmits digital data, so it uses some form of digital modulation, either amplitude or frequency.
I would like to add in order to clarify my initial objection that a hemispherical antenna has a very wide beam resulting in a very low increase in gain in the center in a size like that making it little better than a flat backplane.
You can find the focus point of your dish by shining a light into it, then blowing some smoke or misting water at it... you will see a cone of slightly brighter light projecting from the dish, the point of the cone is the focus point. That's where you want the antenna to be.
Using speed of light and frequency of Wifi signal: 3*10^8 m/s / 2,4GHz -> 3*10^8 ms^-1 / 2.4*10^9 s^-1 Wavelenght is 3m/24 = 0.125m or 12.5 cm. For the wave to move all the way to the dish, then back again in phase with the next wave, you need the distance to be half a wavelength. The dish/reflector should be approx 6.2cm from the antenna.
nice! 10-20ms is a little high for the first hop, but given the choice between no service \ free service or paying for service, I think free service with a 10-20ms first hop is great. Really cool project! I know back when I was in school we played with pringles cans as a directional antenna.
What you're doing and Pringles cans are two different things. Pringles cans are for focusing on a very narrow location which may be far. They're very useful for reception, not so much for transmit. A parabola is the right answer to receive all the weaker signals from various angles, and waveguide them onto the receiver. Similarly the transmitted signal instead of being 360° will now be reflected in general to the focal point of the parabola. It's all about the focal point... and for a multi-antenna TP-Link transceiver (not the best choice for this) changing the focal point to anywhere from Pringles to a flat aluminum foil sheet is the range you can explore. Your bowl is good... but you might benefit from a deeper bowl. To figure out where to place the transceiver antenna in the bowl... do a 3D cross-section and find the middle. If you want the easy way to do this, place three analog cooking thermometers so they stick up from the bowl surface toward the outside... and where they roughly meet is where the antenna should be. You have a multi-antenna setup so signal cancellation is automatically handled for you. (Look up "MIMO" and "Hidden node problem" for more details.) E
Good job. Still, you should have a slider to move it forwards or backwards to fine tune. To other viewers. Sometimes the windows have a metal film to cut down on UV and Infra red. That will pretty much block all signals. The glass in the video looked old and didn't have any tint to it.
You got more views than any of your counterparts who were making bookends by lining an old glass lamp with aluminum foil. I'd say that in and of itself is an accomplishment.
Love it. I was going to try the Pringle can method to try and get wifi at my greenhouse about 300' away. ;-) I have a couple of satellite dishes that would work well.
It's not the signal strength but the direction of the signal and how wide the broadcast beam is. Two standard $100 radios from Ubiquiti can go nearly 15km if installed properly.
Jeff Ferguson A highly directive antenna has a greater signal strength also (in the direction it points), so your statement is somehow misleading. In the receiving end though, not only it boosts signal strength, but it is also reduces noise.
It would be cool to see how much more you could get with this. To be fair, what you have does the job perfectly well. I wonder what the improvement would be with a bigger, more accurate parabola lined with thick copper foil with the antenna right on the focal point...
Wokfi is also good (google the name and try it, if you are having issues) I used to use an old circular deep fryer basket. Make a small hole in the bottom of the basket and push a USB wifi dongle through. It was very crude but it would pick up signals far more than the USB wifi dongle could get alone. I used this circa 2006 (I use lan cables now, but have the odd yagi antenna just in case)
Nice choice on the reflector with regards to your wifi transceiver setup! The Pringles can antenna is a solid performer but you would have to get access to the antenna wires of the transceiver and translate to coax on the Pringles can end. Maybe too much work unless that's your hobby, you took the best route IMHO.
you should use alluminium tape in the inside the reflector so it makes a smoother surface, if you tink of it the amount of scattering that wrincled tinn foil produces is important
Great idea and demonstration. I remember bending tinfoil into an arc as a kid to boost the wifi on my computer but apart from seeing it gain a bar of signal I never knew if it was all that effective, I wish I knew you could ping many bytes and use the return time to assess the signal strength. perhaps with SDR one could get some precise data, and 3D print a dish with an accurate parabola shape, maybe even a stretched elliptical shape to better cover a typical antenna? perhaps with the diversity antennas a slight angle is better for noise rejection? I'm inspired lol thanks!
Excellent build and great information on fine tuning a shop built reflector. Regards, Bob
10 років тому
windsurfer was a solution for me, it is a small parabola shaped template, with alu on it. all that reminds me on radars or front lights on the vehicles
Ive lined a cut open water bottle and spread pieces out and lined it with foil to make a ghetto version of this and it works pretty well depending on the weather but that is a pretty badass version.
I remember such a hacks back from late 1990s. What You could use is a cheap wok pan. It has almost spherical surface and should be a bit more messfree than a tin covered ceramic bowl :)
Technically, the gain of a proper pringles antenna is better than your contraption. On the other hand the beam will be much smaller and it is more difficult to point at the other wireless router.
you could also invest in a Lynksys for your tenants,and ddwrt it.You can turn the TX power up and down from your laptop. I've got that and a turkey tray as a booster;)
I would have thought today's video would be a bookend. Admittedly, your video would probably be about making an amazing jig that could turn out a bookend in seconds.
Seems there would be a lot of scattering of the signal with all of the large wrinkles in the foil. come up with a solution, aluminum paint, copper paint, or similar substance you could apply directly to the smooth surface of the lamp shade. Retest that configuration.
Matthias, get yourself a wifi router and bridge to the network. You will have your own access point without having to run a cable to your computer. Look at garage sales, look for any of the LinkSys WRT54G series (blue and black). I have four or five of them I've picked up for about $1 each. You can put the Open Source DDWRT image on it (it's fairly easy). DDWRT gives you much better control than the default OS on a router. For one thing, it lets your ramp up the radio power.
I make an antenna similar to this one and installed it near a window facing south. The router's antenna I placed in the focus point of the dish was melted by the sun...
Hey matthias, I have a much better solution for you. If you get a wireless router that supports the DD-WRT firmware, you can make the router pick up the weak wifi signal and repeat it again to your new access point. This works a lot better than your current setup, because the antennas of wireless routers are normally very strong!
Would it help to have smoothed out the foil instead of it being all wrinkly or does that matter? Or maybe used a metal bowl instead of glass covered with foil?
I'm wondering here.. in theory, you should get the best reception at the focal point of the dish, but also, if it gets sunlight it *might* melt down the plastic of the receiver *_noooow..._*_ if you cover/paint the aluminum foil... electromagnetically it would still be there... would it still work so well without the risk of damaging the device?_
As others mentioned, I wonder if you would be better off with making a Yagi antenna with a coax cable to your wifi adapter rather than a long USB cable. --- But then again 11ms is pretty good...
Use a space blanket and vacuum it to the dish with some glue then move the router antennas forward inside the dish or change the antenna to a smal yagi.
Great Job. For a better indicator than ping packets, you may try inSSIDer from metageek. It used to be an entirely free software. Currently has a free trial. It is also possible to get a cheap Access Point with DD-WRT firmware compatibility and set it as an access point repeater. This would eliminate the need for USB cable. In addition to that, you will be able to use multiple wireless devices in the workshop. Most Access Points have much better WiFi radio compared to USB ones. I have read that access points with custom firmwares, together with parabolic dishes are used to connect villages in some remote parts of the world.
Don't underestimate the word, "amateur", as in amateur HAM's, who will take you back to school on this antenna building. haha.. That being said, nice build!
ntomata0002 I think he didn't use the windsurfer because in the beginning of this video he says the "People living in the house on the property are nice enough to let him use their Wi-Fi" so it might be pushing it a little to ask them to start attaching stuff to their Wi-Fi antenna...lol or they have a set up like mine with the internal antenna so there's no where to put the wind surfer. There's no type of signal booster he can buy and use? or some type of external antenna he can mount to his shops outside wall?
ntomata0002 I forgot to mention that, years ago, In my old house I used the windsurfer and it worked great... that was on my old Wireless g or n router (I forget which one) before I moved to Uverse from ATT.
hdrjunkie Your comment is irrelevant since I didn't refered to Matthias, but to T-Mans Go Karts. But since you mention it, both sides of the link transmit and receive. Also putting a better (more directional) antenna in one side improves both transmited signal strength (in the selected direction) and received signal strength due to more signal from the source direction and less noise (from any other direction) directed to the antenna. So improving only one side of the link makes it better anyway. Ofcourse improving both sides is the best.
+Keith Reynolds Keith, here are a few ideas: 1. if the bowl is circular, guess the radius, and make some edge templates on paper with a compass. Cut them out, and see how close you got. Adjust. Use a jig saw or band saw to cut your holder. 2. Place bowl above a flat-bed scanner, hold steady and scan. Print out full scale, and cut out silhouette of bowl. I tried this and got pretty close. Perhaps play a bit with the image scale. 3. Take some modelling clay, and slap it on the bowl where you want it. This doesn't solve the problem of making the template. You could use the clay directly, or slice it to get a profile.
ok very nice idea it looks awesome. but here me problem i too have the same problem but my Wi-Fi antenna is on my pc so what would any of suggest i do to get better reception because i can pick it up but then it goes away again. any help will be appreciated i
Is opening the window not usefull? edit: After some reading only metallic coated windows give problems. Normal glass in general let the signal go through pretty good.
Hehehe, way to go! this made me laugh since I've just finished remodeling my itsy bitsy shop, and I had exactly the same lamp, which I took the "dish" off so I could use it as a mobile omni light wherever I need, and I had the dish around in the shop, and each time I cleaned I fought with myself about getting rid of it, since a nice dish is not something you come across often, so every day you can find this dish at a different point in my small shop, but it never gets thrown away, this is a good idea for using it, but my shop is 5 meters from my house, the wi-fi gets there just fine, but who knows what use I'll find for it, it's staying as a fixture in my shop :)
Just be wary that runs of 4m of USB and more require an active amplifier so the USB device can be detected. Pringle cans are more of a narrower beam than a parabolic arc (if you will). If you want to get better reception, you need better dBi antennas. A Yagi would be the best long term solution. Good luck :)
Theoretically, the proper distance from the antenna directly backward to the reflector should be some odd multiple of 1/4 wavelength. At 2.4GHz one wavelength is 12.5cm. So, the distance between the antenna and reflector would be about 3.125cm.
The distance directly sideways and directly up and down from the center of the antenna to the reflector (if the reflector happens to be that big) should be the same odd multiple of 1/2 wavelength (6.25cm), ideally.
Would this setup have more gains, if the antenna was positioned vertical to the curvature of the dish?
@@krollpeter By vertical, I guess that you mean perpendicular. The answer is no. The main improvement that could be made would be to change the shape of the reflector. It's a bit tricky though since he has two radials instead of just one. The bowl really didn't give a lot of improvement over the flat reflector.
@@noncounterproductive4596 I meant perpendicular. Thanks for understanding ... and even responding to me after 6 years!
I did try different reflectors and styles. There is only a gain for very weak signals. For connections of medium qualities or better there is an improvement in numbers, but that difference disappears into insignificance in terms of speed. For me it did not make a difference in speed, if I have -41 or -36 dB.
@@krollpeter Yeah I suppose that once the signal is good enough to get the digital information across consistently any additional strength doesn't really matter.
I ended up buying a large parabolic reflector wifi antenna, and a 3W wifi adaptor to use with it. I have seen that there are also kits for turning a DirecTV (or similar) dish into a wifi beam antenna.
what math are you doing
I love all the re-purposing you do. Good job, Matthias, and thank you for all the entertainment over the past few months since I found your channel.
Put 3 pieces of mirror on the reflector shine a light at it. Where they focus is the focal point. Use that to locate your antenna inside the dish reflector. Hope this helps you!
73
Jimmy, ARRL TS, WX9DX
WX9DX It does. Thanks
well done. I had some spare Directv dishes and took the same TP link and mounted it at the focal plane...zounds...it took a little bit to play with but worked fine business WB5MZO
I don't think you should knock the Pringles cantenna until you've tried it and compared the results! We'd love to see a comparison video...
Sorry trying to get the family up and make breakfast at the same time as sending this. I got tired of using a bowl because it would get bumped. So what I did was I went to an apartment complex and asked if they had any apartments that had a satellite dish that wasn't using the dish. I was given 3. Take your wifi adapter and mount it in the tip. And extend the USB cord with a 25 ft one. Now mount the dish out side where it won't bet bumped like on the roof or wall. Point it and you can get about 3 miles of range. I used mine and pinged the public library 2 1/2 miles away and it was a good connection.
MAKE A VIDEO PLEASE. I'M SERIOUS BECAUSE I USE CAPSLOCK. LOL
I don't need one any more and I dismantled it many years ago. But do a search and you will find info on this
david trystman ok
Or even better, get a wifi router hacked with dd-wrt on the roof and have it take the wireless and convert it back to ethernet, then tag another wifi access point (Ubiquity Networks AP-LR) and rebroadcast the neighbors Wifi into the shop.
Mitch Spacone lol what? Sorry not a computer wiz. :P
I keep stumbling across your videos. I love your breadth of interests and practical solutions to problems. This is exactly what I wanted to know to help with my shop. Thanks for doing all the detail work and sharing! 👍
Very interesting attemp! I don't know if you have updated the design. Ideally, your dish should be parabolic. Since you made a lathe, you should be able to make a wood antenna base. To optimize the signal enhanement, ping is a good method but indirect. You should be able to see the signal strength in dB with the driver and software come along with the adapter.
Pasar del inglés al. Traductor no entiendo inglés
Haha, that's pretty cool. I also found it a funny coincidence that I just moved to a shared flat recently, and had a desktop with me that had no wifi adapter. I'm on a budget, so I searched for highly rated adapters that were cheap, and I wound up buying the exact same TP-LINK adapter used in this video. It is quite excellent!
Combining 2 of my great loves, computer networking and wood work.
Wavelength at 2.4Ghz is 5.92" so that distance is important to create a standing wave. A wave can't "stand" if it can't fit between the antenna and the reflector. Doing half the distance will invert the standing wave causing destructive interference --- the more ya know, cheers :)
That is VERY cool! My dad and I made a horizontal polarized high gain 2.4GHz antenna specifically to get a better signal. It's absolutely amazing how a better antenna, or reflector, can help make something work better. Great work!
Good solution! altough a directional antenna is not that pricey, and probably more stable. but you need a repeater for those. Anyway, i'm sure youre aware of all that. It's nice to see it works that well!
the best bit is the genuine look of self satisfaction right at the end, and quite right too... bravo :)
Perhaps some velcro to hold the reciever?
Esto sí que es tecnología punta!!!!
Lo que hace el ingenio cuando se necesita.
No descartamos ponerlo en práctica nosotros en algún momento.
Enhorabuena y gracias por compartirlo
Man I love your DIY attitude to everything! :) Fits very well with my mindset. Subscribed. Cheers.
THANK YOU! I hadn't thought of this. I have a fancy commercial-grade (Cradlepoint) WiFi+cellular access point for my motor-home, but it has no external antenna port for its WiFi-as-WAN radio and I'm lucky to get 1mbps throughput from the house on a good day. Now there's hope again. ;)
I've been trying to stream HD video from my PC (office) to the living room (probably... 25 feet away? Awkward straight line through walls, diagonally though).
I bought a much longer antenna for my PC, and it helped my range a lot, especially considering the antenna is still basically against the wall, pretty low (average large PC tower on the floor).
Previously I always had the luxury of hard-wiring my connection, and I could do that now under the floor, but I also don't want to drill too many holes in the nice wood flooring at this rented house.
I have often thought of solutions such as the ones presented in this video, but I'm sure it's nearly as extreme as your issues here, at all. Regardless, I admire your aptitude and work, taking a problem and turning it into a fun solution.
Cheers Matthias,
-Alec
Smart guy with foil over salad bowl as stock vertical antenna that use for feed horn.
Nice! I once heated a CD to make it more pliable to form a reflector similar to this. It was just enough to keep me from being disconnected. Was very make shift as all my belongings were in another state after a move and really had to make do with limited materials.
I bet if you got some metallic spray paint and just coated the surface of the bowl, you'd get even better signal collection. That creased up foil will cause a bunch of dispersion. Good job though. I like that anything can be looked at as a problem to be solved and that you come up with solutions and post them!
You sir, are a PERENNIAL champion. This is gold. GOLD.
3:39 This is how the Windows 10 Default Desktop wallpaper was made
GTO hahahaha
Very observant.
lolll
Haha.😂✌️
For sound amplification, I place my phone in a bread pan, and I can hear the music on my phone from farther away. This is somewhat related to what you were doing.
Put the antenna outside the window. Unless specified otherwise, window glass has a metallic content that will attenuate the RF by a significant amount.
an old DishNetwork or Direct TV dish works good. Just replace the lnb with the wifi adapter.
the wave length of 2.4 GHz signal is 12.5 cm. The space from the reflector should be multiple of 6.25 for maximum performance (so both directions make 12.5).
I have to admit. I went full geek mode and thought "What could you build that would hold that in place." Right. You are a wood worker.
Also try looking up a wifi parabolic reflector template. Just need some paper, tape and aluminum foil. I used one during my deployment and it worked great.
Good idea. I have a similar problem with the wifi adapter in my room, but I never tried to make a reflector. I guess it can't hurt to try, looks like it worked for you. Nice video.
let us know how it gos
OK, no problem.
MaximusPayne
So how did it turn out?
Was the ping okay, and did the bandwith decreas?
I am very curious :-)
As far as I can tell, the problem is not the ping to the router, it's fast enough, mostly a few miliseconds (generally 1 or 2). I suspect that the real problem is interference with other signals and/or signal attenuation, since the router is a few walls apart even though it's not "far" away. I bought a new adapter, one that has two antennas and more gain, but it does not seem to have improved that much. Guess I'll just have to wire utp to the room and get it over with ;)
Thank you for your answer :-)
If you make a very large dish and then point the small dish 180 up at the large dish, you will double again your signal.
I liked this. you might note for next time the focal point for a hemispherical reflector is 1/2 the radius your bowl is not a full hemisphere so you were far to deep inside the bowl on the video.. It might have made it quicker to find the sweet spot. and if the diameter was more than 10 wavelengths that would increase your range to about two miles...
It would be the size of an umbrela. Even so I am not sure that so much delay between reflections and direct signal would give a respectively better SNR.
The rest just seem wrong since a hemisphere is not the right shape for a reflector, also the focal point must be specific quarters of the wavelegth from the reflector on the back, so there is no way to calculate in a random bowl the best position (since it is not build in the right shape).
ntomata0002 Ha,Ha I was designing microwave systems in the late 1970's and training microwave communications technicians in the 1980's and hemispherical reflectors and parabolic reflectors were no stranger to my slide-rules's answers. Microwave is analog not binary and I am apparently more of an expert than you in some technologies. (Although I was a teacher of PC service and repair for 15 years also.)
Dennis Miles You should understand that today’s simulation tools give us a far better understanding of how electromagnetic radiation propagates compared to the limited knowledge we had around 70s. I have designed and build a lot of antennas in the 2.4GHz band, so expertise is no issue. What do you mean by “microwave is analog”? The network transmits digital data, so it uses some form of digital modulation, either amplitude or frequency.
I would like to add in order to clarify my initial objection that a hemispherical antenna has a very wide beam resulting in a very low increase in gain in the center in a size like that making it little better than a flat backplane.
You can find the focus point of your dish by shining a light into it, then blowing some smoke or misting water at it... you will see a cone of slightly brighter light projecting from the dish, the point of the cone is the focus point. That's where you want the antenna to be.
Using speed of light and frequency of Wifi signal:
3*10^8 m/s / 2,4GHz -> 3*10^8 ms^-1 / 2.4*10^9 s^-1
Wavelenght is 3m/24 = 0.125m or 12.5 cm.
For the wave to move all the way to the dish, then back again in phase with the next wave, you need the distance to be half a wavelength. The dish/reflector should be approx 6.2cm from the antenna.
nice! 10-20ms is a little high for the first hop, but given the choice between no service \ free service or paying for service, I think free service with a 10-20ms first hop is great. Really cool project! I know back when I was in school we played with pringles cans as a directional antenna.
The metal shields from paint lamps work very well.. I have one in my Workshop right now.
What you're doing and Pringles cans are two different things. Pringles cans are for focusing on a very narrow location which may be far. They're very useful for reception, not so much for transmit. A parabola is the right answer to receive all the weaker signals from various angles, and waveguide them onto the receiver. Similarly the transmitted signal instead of being 360° will now be reflected in general to the focal point of the parabola.
It's all about the focal point... and for a multi-antenna TP-Link transceiver (not the best choice for this) changing the focal point to anywhere from Pringles to a flat aluminum foil sheet is the range you can explore. Your bowl is good... but you might benefit from a deeper bowl.
To figure out where to place the transceiver antenna in the bowl... do a 3D cross-section and find the middle. If you want the easy way to do this, place three analog cooking thermometers so they stick up from the bowl surface toward the outside... and where they roughly meet is where the antenna should be.
You have a multi-antenna setup so signal cancellation is automatically handled for you. (Look up "MIMO" and "Hidden node problem" for more details.)
E
Nice and simple! You could get even better results with high power WiFi adapter such as alfa awus036nh + directional yagi antenna.
OMG Matthias, I laughed. I follow your woodworking but hadn't found this video till now. Love it!
Good job. Still, you should have a slider to move it forwards or backwards to fine tune.
To other viewers. Sometimes the windows have a metal film to cut down on UV and Infra red. That will pretty much block all signals. The glass in the video looked old and didn't have any tint to it.
But why make a proper slider when elastic bands work fine?
Fantastic work, as always. Love your videos, keep up the great work!
You got more views than any of your counterparts who were making bookends by lining an old glass lamp with aluminum foil. I'd say that in and of itself is an accomplishment.
Love it. I was going to try the Pringle can method to try and get wifi at my greenhouse about 300' away. ;-) I have a couple of satellite dishes that would work well.
You might need two good wlan antennas both equipped with satellite dishes pointing at each other.
It's not the signal strength but the direction of the signal and how wide the broadcast beam is. Two standard $100 radios from Ubiquiti can go nearly 15km if installed properly.
Jeff Ferguson A highly directive antenna has a greater signal strength also (in the direction it points), so your statement is somehow misleading. In the receiving end though, not only it boosts signal strength, but it is also reduces noise.
It would be cool to see how much more you could get with this. To be fair, what you have does the job perfectly well. I wonder what the improvement would be with a bigger, more accurate parabola lined with thick copper foil with the antenna right on the focal point...
Awesome videos. Very talented. I really want to try this.
Wokfi is also good (google the name and try it, if you are having issues)
I used to use an old circular deep fryer basket. Make a small hole in the bottom of the basket and push a USB wifi dongle through. It was very crude but it would pick up signals far more than the USB wifi dongle could get alone. I used this circa 2006 (I use lan cables now, but have the odd yagi antenna just in case)
Nice choice on the reflector with regards to your wifi transceiver setup! The Pringles can antenna is a solid performer but you would have to get access to the antenna wires of the transceiver and translate to coax on the Pringles can end. Maybe too much work unless that's your hobby, you took the best route IMHO.
heh nice, I was going to recommend the Pringle can, glad I waiting until the end of the video :)
you should use alluminium tape in the inside the reflector so it makes a smoother surface, if you tink of it the amount of scattering that wrincled tinn foil produces is important
With a waveleght of more than 100mm, even holes of 5mm would be invisible.
Great idea and demonstration. I remember bending tinfoil into an arc as a kid to boost the wifi on my computer but apart from seeing it gain a bar of signal I never knew if it was all that effective, I wish I knew you could ping many bytes and use the return time to assess the signal strength. perhaps with SDR one could get some precise data, and 3D print a dish with an accurate parabola shape, maybe even a stretched elliptical shape to better cover a typical antenna? perhaps with the diversity antennas a slight angle is better for noise rejection? I'm inspired lol thanks!
I laughed at the pringle can joke.
A nerd + woodcraft guy , really talented.
Excellent build and great information on fine tuning a shop built reflector.
Regards,
Bob
windsurfer was a solution for me, it is a small parabola shaped template, with alu on it. all that reminds me on radars or front lights on the vehicles
Ive lined a cut open water bottle and spread pieces out and lined it with foil to make a ghetto version of this and it works pretty well depending on the weather but that is a pretty badass version.
The "Pringle Cans" quote. Nice touch to finish off.
I remember such a hacks back from late 1990s.
What You could use is a cheap wok pan. It has almost spherical surface and should be a bit more messfree than a tin covered ceramic bowl :)
1:14 - The Joys and Ethics of Insect Eating. I must know more....
Great job Herbert.
Great! I wish I knew this a year ago when I used to live in a rural area with poor signal.
Technically, the gain of a proper pringles antenna is better than your contraption. On the other hand the beam will be much smaller and it is more difficult to point at the other wireless router.
you could also invest in a Lynksys for your tenants,and ddwrt it.You can turn the TX power up and down from your laptop.
I've got that and a turkey tray as a booster;)
I would have thought today's video would be a bookend.
Admittedly, your video would probably be about making an amazing jig that could turn out a bookend in seconds.
good idea!I have a mirrored cup, but heavy
Great effort and useful. Consider larger packet sizes when doing trace routes and other networking technologies like bridges or directional antennas.
Mr Wandel use a common metal bowl as smooth and polished as possible every wrinkle in the foil causes loss of signal.
Nice one! Made your ping times basically more than two times faster!
Seems there would be a lot of scattering of the signal with all of the large wrinkles in the foil. come up with a solution, aluminum paint, copper paint, or similar substance you could apply directly to the smooth surface of the lamp shade. Retest that configuration.
+drmckee As long as the wavelength of the signal is much longe than the thickness of the wrinkles, it doesn't matter. And it's about 10 cm.
Matthias, get yourself a wifi router and bridge to the network. You will have your own access point without having to run a cable to your computer.
Look at garage sales, look for any of the LinkSys WRT54G series (blue and black). I have four or five of them I've picked up for about $1 each. You can put the Open Source DDWRT image on it (it's fairly easy). DDWRT gives you much better control than the default OS on a router. For one thing, it lets your ramp up the radio power.
"Pringle cans are for amateurs"...haha you're the man. Keep making great videos.
Thumbs up because of the Canadian Tire bag in the background at 3:10.
Probably could use an old directv dish with foil or metallic spray paint?
Copper or gold foil for decoupage might also work
I make an antenna similar to this one and installed it near a window facing south. The router's antenna I placed in the focus point of the dish was melted by the sun...
Hey matthias, I have a much better solution for you. If you get a wireless router that supports the DD-WRT firmware, you can make the router pick up the weak wifi signal and repeat it again to your new access point. This works a lot better than your current setup, because the antennas of wireless routers are normally very strong!
The modern equivalent of the Bunny ears dance of the old days before cable.
Would it help to have smoothed out the foil instead of it being all wrinkly or does that matter? Or maybe used a metal bowl instead of glass covered with foil?
I'm wondering here..
in theory, you should get the best reception at the focal point of the dish, but also, if it gets sunlight it *might* melt down the plastic of the receiver
*_noooow..._*_ if you cover/paint the aluminum foil... electromagnetically it would still be there... would it still work so well without the risk of damaging the device?_
Geez, everybodys' a waveguide engineer I guess... Cool video Matthias. Would like to see how much gain you got from your lamptenna though.
May work even better if you place it outside the building. The window glass, water or even concrete walls are always trouble for WiFi.
I think what they use for the hotspot for parabolic lens solar collectors is 1/4 the diameter of the bowl. either way, great result :)
I used to have a hat made out of tin foil. It made me able to pick up all kinds of crazy stuff. It was awesome.
What you do is truly amazing. Excellent
As others mentioned, I wonder if you would be better off with making a Yagi antenna with a coax cable to your wifi adapter rather than a long USB cable. --- But then again 11ms is pretty good...
Use a space blanket and vacuum it to the dish with some glue then move the router antennas forward inside the dish or change the antenna to a smal yagi.
Great Job. For a better indicator than ping packets, you may try inSSIDer from metageek. It used to be an entirely free software. Currently has a free trial.
It is also possible to get a cheap Access Point with DD-WRT firmware compatibility and set it as an access point repeater. This would eliminate the need for USB cable. In addition to that, you will be able to use multiple wireless devices in the workshop. Most Access Points have much better WiFi radio compared to USB ones.
I have read that access points with custom firmwares, together with parabolic dishes are used to connect villages in some remote parts of the world.
Don't underestimate the word, "amateur", as in amateur HAM's, who will take you back to school on this antenna building. haha.. That being said, nice build!
a carpenter and tinkering geek. I approve.
I think you should look into making an external antenna properly tuned for 2.4GHz, or just buy one on ebay cheap.
thats Pretty cool, Im going to have to try that.
Go for the "WindSurfer WiFi Antenna Reflector" instead. It is simmilar but very easy to build.
ntomata0002 I think he didn't use the windsurfer because in the beginning of this video he says the "People living in the house on the property are nice enough to let him use their Wi-Fi" so it might be pushing it a little to ask them to start attaching stuff to their Wi-Fi antenna...lol or they have a set up like mine with the internal antenna so there's no where to put the wind surfer. There's no type of signal booster he can buy and use? or some type of external antenna he can mount to his shops outside wall?
ntomata0002 I forgot to mention that, years ago, In my old house I used the windsurfer and it worked great... that was on my old Wireless g or n router (I forget which one) before I moved to Uverse from ATT.
hdrjunkie Your comment is irrelevant since I didn't refered to Matthias, but to T-Mans Go Karts. But since you mention it, both sides of the link transmit and receive. Also putting a better (more directional) antenna in one side improves both transmited signal strength (in the selected direction) and received signal strength due to more signal from the source direction and less noise (from any other direction) directed to the antenna. So improving only one side of the link makes it better anyway. Ofcourse improving both sides is the
best.
I so wanted to see how you cut drew the shape of the bole to cut away.
+Keith Reynolds
Keith, here are a few ideas:
1. if the bowl is circular, guess the radius, and make some edge templates on paper with a compass. Cut them out, and see how close you got. Adjust. Use a jig saw or band saw to cut your holder.
2. Place bowl above a flat-bed scanner, hold steady and scan. Print out full scale, and cut out silhouette of bowl. I tried this and got pretty close. Perhaps play a bit with the image scale.
3. Take some modelling clay, and slap it on the bowl where you want it. This doesn't solve the problem of making the template. You could use the clay directly, or slice it to get a profile.
ok very nice idea it looks awesome. but here me problem i too have the same problem but my Wi-Fi antenna is on my pc so what would any of suggest i do to get better reception because i can pick it up but then it goes away again. any help will be appreciated i
+tertius van wyk Get an external USB wifi adapter
Is opening the window not usefull?
edit: After some reading only metallic coated windows give problems. Normal glass in general let the signal go through pretty good.
awesome sir , what an elegant solution
Would be a good hobby to play with parabola calculations and put that into a wooden dish.
Nice...You are a professional....
could you make a parabolic dish with Kerfi bending? And the parabolic trough may be worth investigating with 2 antennas.
Have you considered just running a (LAN connection) wire to the router instead? I'll bet it is under 100' and that will keep your speeds up as well.
You are a geek after my own heart. Are you guessing or calculating the focii.
Good job! Its exactly what i needed!
Hehehe, way to go! this made me laugh since I've just finished remodeling my itsy bitsy shop, and I had exactly the same lamp, which I took the "dish" off so I could use it as a mobile omni light wherever I need, and I had the dish around in the shop, and each time I cleaned I fought with myself about getting rid of it, since a nice dish is not something you come across often, so every day you can find this dish at a different point in my small shop, but it never gets thrown away, this is a good idea for using it, but my shop is 5 meters from my house, the wi-fi gets there just fine, but who knows what use I'll find for it, it's staying as a fixture in my shop :)
Just be wary that runs of 4m of USB and more require an active amplifier so the USB device can be detected.
Pringle cans are more of a narrower beam than a parabolic arc (if you will).
If you want to get better reception, you need better dBi antennas.
A Yagi would be the best long term solution. Good luck :)
this guy is so smart
You can also use that as a hat.