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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

#61

Post by z3t4 »

sarreph wrote: 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...

creases could help scatter the signal into more directions and maybe change the signal properties so it's easier to go though some materials. I know nothing about radio but creases makes sound more even (lookup Diffusion) if it's random because it doesn't strengthen any particular wavelength, and sound bounces in different directions instead of straight.

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

#62

Post by Aloha »

arghwhat wrote: post #57
Aloha wrote: post #49

I don't think this is working the way he thinks it does. What he's likely do is shielding the wifi receiver from co-channel interference, which is likely reducing the noise floor at the AP - which is giving him effectively more range, because now the AP can hear stations that are further away with greater ease. I don't think this is giving expanded tx coverage lobes as his diagram indicates, its likely a function of…

It is unconnected, so it will not dissipate anything (shield). Depending on whether or not it is positioned on a wave node, it will either be a passive reflector or director. It won't be a satellite dish as the comment thread on the page mentions, though, which is both a passive reflector and a focusing device, whose curvature requires at least some level of precision to be of any help. For something much more helpfu…

It need not be grounded to be an semi-effective shield, we're talking about frequencies that drywall will attenuate here. Think about it this way, if it can reflect TX, it can also reflect other cochannel signals from that direction.

It may very well be working in more than one mode - but I strongly suspect its a far better shield, than it is a forward power reflector. It also may strongly effect the VSWR of the existing dipoles used here.

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

#63

Post by Aloha »

bitdivision wrote: post #59
komali2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to build your Faraday cage to block out wifi wavelengths but not cell phone ones? How far apart are they?

You could likely block anything over 2.3 GHz and get away with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_frequencies_in_the_US

unless you have Sprint ;-)

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

#64

Post by Aloha »

vdfs wrote: post #51
Aloha wrote: post #49

I don't think this is working the way he thinks it does. What he's likely do is shielding the wifi receiver from co-channel interference, which is likely reducing the noise floor at the AP - which is giving him effectively more range, because now the AP can hear stations that are further away with greater ease. I don't think this is giving expanded tx coverage lobes as his diagram indicates, its likely a function of…

Will changing the Channel help in this case?

doing a proper site survey and changing channel would help - you need to see what channels interfere in each quadrant of the building, and then choose accordingly. You're also generally better off on a channel with one moderately strong cochannel station, than 10 weak cochannel stations.

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

#65

Post by arxpoetica »

When we were kids we took massive mesh wire frames and wrapped them around the receivers of these kind [1] of dinky walkie talkies. It fully extended the range by a whole two blocks. We thought we'd invented sliced bread.

[1] https://img.segundamano.mx/medium/32/3227658794.jpg

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

#66

Post by zeep »

pimlottc wrote: post #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.

took about 2 seconds for me but yeah, it almost feels like they are using huge web fonts with no default local fonts... (probably not the case because I usually disable web fonts)

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

#68

Post by barbersturgeon »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #39

The geek in me loves stuff like this. The old and jaded techie in me says just get something designed to solve the issue like: https://eero.com or the UniFi Mesh :)

The jaded geek in me says just run some ethernet this WiFi is too much hassle

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

#70

Post by dragonwriter »

barbersturgeon wrote: post #68
myrandomcomment wrote: post #39

The geek in me loves stuff like this. The old and jaded techie in me says just get something designed to solve the issue like: https://eero.com or the UniFi Mesh :)

The jaded geek in me says just run some ethernet this WiFi is too much hassle

Yeah, but lots of devices people might want to use on their home network are inconvenient to tie to ethernet. There's a good case to be made to wiring what can be wired, though.
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