Networks My Dorm's Wireless forces me to Adapt [56k]

After a little more than a semester of being in a malicious cycle of the wireless network disconnecting or being unresponsive because my room is too far away from an access pont, I finally decided to solve the problem myself.

I e-mailed my university to ask if they would allow repeaters but they stated that doing so was against their rules.

Therefore, I decided to upgrade my own antenna. But, the problem is that my antenna was located inside my laptop. I did not want to start cutting away my laptop so I decided to go out buy a Linksys Wireless USB Adapter and ruin the warranty.

The diminutive antenna on the adapter was only rated at a 2dBi gain so out it went and a 9dBi came in.

I utilized, as well, Thermal Interface glue to add a copper BGA heatsink to the BGA chip since that thing, even with the heatsink on, becomes hot enough to feel uncomfortable after 3 seconds of coming in contact with it.



So far, about 8 hours have passed and I have not yet been dropped or suffered a freeze. *Knocks on wood*

This is compared to me being dropped at least twice a day and signal quality being, at the most, good. Now the signal quality is Excellent.

Yeah I need to put it into a box as well. My idea is to interface it to a PIC to to emulate a data transfer meter like those VU audio meters.

Yeah yeah, my trashcan is a Soy Sauce bucket... Hey, parents own a Chinese food restaurant.

 

That's one big-ass aerial. It's amazing you're not picking signals up from satellites

 

The antenna is about one to 2.5 to 3.5cm shorter than the rim of the Soysauce bucket.

 

One of those high power (200mW) Engenius pcmcia wireless adapters surely would have done the trick too. It is amazing what those puppies can pull in that regular cards and internal adapters can not.

 

i love creative people that never give up

just like me really

 

I am adding this on my wireless adapter.



Only thing I will say is that it has 4 wires connected to the adapter.

 

Damn, what a fine plan. What's that add-on?

 

How much did the aerial set you back?

Must say kudos on the smart plan!

 

Antenna set me back 10.50 USD and the add-on is going to be a visual network meter with a possibility of having a variable amplification node to boost transmission.

13-17dBm transmission power might be brought up to about 24. I will have to add some active cooling on it as an aside.

I also have another antenna that I am thinking about utilizing but I do not know enough about wireless architecture to be able to forsee if such an addition will be of any help.

 

Blooming hell thats a BIG one!!!
inuendo aside, you might want to consider that your introducing a lot of noise into the radio spectrum which could affect other users. But then if your all sorted i shouldnt worry about it. Another thing is that you might want to be on the look out for the FCC as there are rules about how much power you can throw into a broadcast (which is what your doing).

 

Yeah, thanks for the heads up. I looked at the FCC Part 15 FAQ and it seems for my antenna, I can let it push out a maximum of 27dBm or about 500mW.

So that should not be a problem since I have, through some research, come to the conclusion that a too high of a power output will actually reduce the effectiveness of my modified adapter.

Most of the other dorms around me have their own wireless networks set up with a subscription to another provider in order to have their own dedicated interface to the world wide web. With my old antenna, I could only detect up 8 wireless networks, but with this one, I can detect about 17 (2 are from businesses).

Though the solution I have now works very well, I might as well see if I can go a little further since I am quite curious - though I will stay within the legal limits. I want to see if I can pick up the Engineering Department's wireless signal.

 

http://www.fuber.org/antenna/target0.html

the metal one on the top is a 26dbi omni antenna also about 1.7m long

2 tube ones are 12 dbi omnis

now these run on either my linksys wrts or my 2 200mW senaos

nice mod on the usb nic
i normally run a 7 dbi antenna on my car when i am out wardriving and that gives me a 250-300m range at ground level

the waveguide did a 25ish km link with ease

 

I am almost finished with the construction of the "box". Notice the fan since increased amplification will most likely make the BGA chip burn hotter.

 

Don't suppose you fancy writing up a nice tutorial on this?

Would go down a charm!

 

I'll write up something after I am done and evaluated that it works.

One correction I must make: The additional circuitry controls the adapter's chip for increasing the power output for transmission. The signal does not actually route through the other board itself since that would involve me having to be extra careful of my circuitry in both design and actual construction.

What the board does for sure is the above and take the transmission rate, the LED flashing, and convert the frequency to equivlent bits for serializing to a sort of VU meter.

 

These antennas can be bought quite cheaply, and the linksys wireless devices are the easiest to mod! But a guide would be cool as Tibby said. Might even have a go myself.

tacticus, 25KM you say? That's a long way, got a link? Because I'm considering trying to set up a wireless link to my grandparents house about 2 miles away and this might come in handy, cost permitting.

 

I second that request - also what exactly does that panel do and where do you get it?

 

http://www.0wn4ge.co.uk/?page=gal&gpag=/hardware/wireless/mantenna

"girthy"

its about 12dB gain, and yes that is a magmount on the bottom.....

http://www.frars.org.uk/cgi-bin/render.pl?pageid=999999# and http://wireless.gumph.org/articles/homemadeomni.html for plans.

 

If you've LOS to your granparents house you could quite easily use a couple of parbolic antennae to set up the link. It's be a lot cheaper.

Plenty of info at http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

 

Yea, already been to that site and might give these things a try. Just need to get out an OS map to check the contour lines to see whether there are any major hills in the way, I fear there might be one about 30meters too high

EDIT: DId some research, it's actually only 1.1miles away,and the hill is 8m too high.