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I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

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Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#31
A bit off topic, but what is this page doing, loading almost 500K in 2 XHR calls for approximately 9K of text... Egads, all the images are inlined data URIs!

I was staring at a blank page with a single image for over 10 seconds before the article text loaded. No loading indicator or anything.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a quick off-the-top-of-my-head calculation, I take 300,000,000, the speed of light in meters/second (approximate), divide by cycles per second, you get wavelength in meters. In this case, parent calculates a quarter wavelength. A full wavelength is about 5.9cm. It’s easy to get off by an order magnitude in your head, but if through sheer repetition you know 28Mhz is about 10m, you’ll know you’re off if your 30Mhz…

300 000 000 m/s

Yeesh, it’s right there in the article I linked, innit? Fixed, thanks.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#33

I am using my neighbors WiFi, which I can only catch in my balcony. He stays above me, but diagonally opposite, so the source is quite away. Any way I can amplify the WiFi strength? So I need the source to be around in order to amplify?

Use a Ubiquiti Nanostation directional antenna. These things are quite powerful and relatively cheap. Have used them before to link two sites ~20m apart.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#34
post #33

I am using my neighbors WiFi, which I can only catch in my balcony. He stays above me, but diagonally opposite, so the source is quite away. Any way I can amplify the WiFi strength? So I need the source to be around in order to amplify?

Use a Ubiquiti Nanostation directional antenna. These things are quite powerful and relatively cheap. Have used them before to link two sites ~20m apart.

Seconding the Ubiquiti rec, just in general. Their equipment is better in difficult radio environments than anything else I've ever used.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#35
post #11
post #8

I was thinking of doing something similar a few days ago but came to the conclusion — perhaps wrongly — that the inevitable creases in a DIY aluminium foil sheet would render it ineffective as a dish, due to the scatter created. Anyone more knowledgeable able to chime-in on the effect of creases here? I couldn’t find any mention of it in the article...

speed of light / 5 GHz / 4 ~= 1.5 cm. If you can keep the size of the largest crease/feature/defect in your foil smaller than this, you should be okay.

It’s always fun when you get to use the speed of light in a commonplace application!

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#36
post #11
post #8

I was thinking of doing something similar a few days ago but came to the conclusion — perhaps wrongly — that the inevitable creases in a DIY aluminium foil sheet would render it ineffective as a dish, due to the scatter created. Anyone more knowledgeable able to chime-in on the effect of creases here? I couldn’t find any mention of it in the article...

speed of light / 5 GHz / 4 ~= 1.5 cm. If you can keep the size of the largest crease/feature/defect in your foil smaller than this, you should be okay.

I've seen microwave focusing mirrors for high-power applications that were rough CNC milled surfaces. The overall shape had been optimized fairly precisely by simulation, but because the intended wavelength was so long, the tool marks were irrelevant.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#37
It can work surprisingly well, I made a "dish" with an aluminum foil that was able to connect to a Romanian Wi-Fi hotspot from Bulgaria, according to Google Maps it should be something like 20KM distance. I should note that I had direct view of the town as I had significantly higher altitude.

The hotspot was some kind of public service provided by the Romanian town as it's name suggested. The ip WhoIs also confirmed that it was a Romanian one.

Every now and then the connection would have had slowed down and I would do some "Voodoo magic" on the aluminum foil to fix it(Not sure if it was me though, it seemed like if I move the dish slightly or fix a bump in the foil the connection would improve).

This was probably like 7-8 years ago and I was able to get something close to 6-7Mbps as far as I remember.

Re: I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

#40

A bit off topic, but what is this page doing, loading almost 500K in 2 XHR calls for approximately 9K of text... Egads, all the images are inlined data URIs! I was staring at a blank page with a single image for over 10 seconds before the article text loaded. No loading indicator or anything.

Thanks, I tried multiple browsers before I read your comment. It took 30s for me.
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