18 Feb
2013
18 Feb
'13
4:57 p.m.
I want to start doing some experiments with roof to roof wifi.
I think it would be a worthwhile to get two portable satellite
antennas with tripods and see what we can get out of them.
With such a minor investment in equipment we will be able test whether
two rooftop locations can connect to each other before we go out and
buy dedicated equipment for installation.
The small direct tv dishes can be had for $15 to $25 on craigslist.
I found the following on craigslist for $35:
*Two satellite dish tripods
*Alignment compass
*Two small satellite dishes
The problem is that it's spread over two locations, one in Hayward and
one in Milpitas.
Are any of you going near Milpitas and/or Hayward this week and would
you have time to pick this up? If not, I can probably go on a field
trip.
If we get this stuff, then we would additionally need:
*Two sets of binoculars (we only need to borrow them)
*One more compass
*Two wifi usb adapters or smaller wifi to ethernet adapters
What would be really amazing is two sets of binoculars with built-in
compasses, but we can do without.
--
Marc Juul
18 Feb
18 Feb
5:33 p.m.
I have 3 satellite TV dishes I can donate. One is a round Dish Network dish
that says "500" on it, another is a small round DirectTV dish, and the
third is a bigger oval-ish DirectTV one that says "Slimline" on it.
I'd never heard of these types of dishes used for 2.4GHz wifi, but reading
online it seems people are having success with them. Here is a project were
they used these types of dishes to detect wifi 8 miles away by replacing
the feedhorn with a custom soldered "biquad" antenna,
http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 4:57 PM, Marc Juul <marcjc(a)gmail.com> wrote:
6:47 p.m.
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 5:33 PM, Miguel Vargas <unroar(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Awesome! Do you need help bringing them to sudo room?
I'd never heard of these types of dishes used for
2.4GHz wifi, but reading
online it seems people are having success with them.
Yeah. They're just parabolic reflectors. They should reflect 2.4 ghz
just as well as everything else. The only parabolic antennas we need
to worry about are mesh antennas with much wider spacing than the
metal mesh in a normal microwave door. They should still work with
quite a bit wider spacing though.
Interesting. The easier solution is to use usb wifi dongle mounted in
place of the normal satellite receiver head. That also keeps signal
loss to a minimum as the connetion is digital (usb) all the way up to
the receiver.
--
Marc Juul
19 Feb
19 Feb
3:16 a.m.
Yea, I am going to need help getting them over there. They need to be
unmounted from their current locations and it will be a lot of stuff to
carry. I'm only about a mile from sudoroom and I'm generally available,
let's try to coordinate this week.
The usb stick seems like a good simple solution. We could start looking at
other designs if we end up needing more performance.
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 6:47 PM, Marc Juul <marcjc(a)gmail.com> wrote:
11:42 a.m.
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 3:16 AM, Miguel Vargas <unroar(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Sounds good.
The usb stick seems like a good simple solution. We
could start looking at
other designs if we end up needing more performance.
Yeah. Let's try usb sticks first. Jake suggested that we should try to
test the setup during rain / fog, since water blocks 2.4 ghz. So we
should get this set up as soon as possible (before it stops raining)
or we may get into a situation where we spend the summer setting up
rooftop connections, only to have them all fail when it starts raining
again.
--
Marc
21 Feb
21 Feb
4:35 p.m.
Let me know if anybody can come by my place any time before the meeting and
help me with unmounting and transporting the 3 satellite dishes. I'm about
a mile from sudoroom near Fairyland.
Thanks
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 11:42 AM, Marc Juul <marcjc(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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Marc Juul -
Miguel Vargas