Live data from Hacker News

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

jiffchat.com

151–160 of 181 posts

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

#151
post #38

This kind of hack was really popular when wifi was first being adopted. These reflectors work best when they are spaced according to the wavelength. Here is a template I remember seeing years ago: http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/

t looks neat, but it doesn't tell you how far away you should place it or how big to make it. Am I misssing something?

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

#152
post #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…

Old trick is to use Pringles (or other) can as directional antenna: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-make-a-wifi-antenna-out...

I remember seeing that in Mr. Robot.

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

#153
This blog is missing a lot of details before we can consider this experiment successful. Most importantly, what is the usable throughput of a station in the "improved" coverage area? I would recommend using iperf before/after to see if there is any practical benefit.

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

#154

If you want to to do this "properly", see http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/wifiyagi.htm When messing with antennas, things like distance needs to be thoroughly calculated. Foil can help in many ways, but it can also make things worse—antenna calculations are tricky.

I know what some of those words mean...

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

#155

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.

There's no reason for this content to use JavaScript at all. I'm going to start holding this up as an example of why browsers shouldn't have JavaScript at all - many developers simply don't understand when not to use it. Educating them one at a time won't fix it.

> There's no reason for this content to use JavaScript at all.

How else would you add live comments without JS? This page is effectively a big chatroom. You can write at the bottom of the page and the website fetches the new messages async.

Don't tell me you would have a big http refresh every 5 seconds to load in the new chat messages, that's even worst than using JS.

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason for this content to use JavaScript at all. I'm going to start holding this up as an example of why browsers shouldn't have JavaScript at all - many developers simply don't understand when not to use it. Educating them one at a time won't fix it.

> There's no reason for this content to use JavaScript at all. How else would you add live comments without JS? This page is effectively a big chatroom. You can write at the bottom of the page and the website fetches the new messages async. Don't tell me you would have a big http refresh every 5 seconds to load in the new chat messages, that's even worst than using JS.

>How else would you add live comments without JS? This page is effectively a big chatroom. You can write at the bottom of the page and the website fetches the new messages async.

Why on Earth does it need to be some kind of live chatroom? Just render them server-side and add live updates as a nice-to-have if JavaScript is enabled.

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

#157
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh... no kidding. I'm going to have to try that out some day. How was the signal like on the wok with the antenna through the center?

I haven't personally tried sticking an antenna through a wok (just putting one behind the router was enough for my purpose), but rumors say that you can achieve a range of several miles if you do it right.

There are online calculators http://www.radiolabs.com/stations/wifi_calc.html note that the cable loss mentioned is the antenna feeder cable

And Cisco Press do some good books on the basics of WiFi network design.

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

#158
post #138
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, some devices can be extremely noisy. If you have a Chromecast or Google Home, for instance, turn Guest Mode off -- it creates a hidden network on the same channel as your AP.

My chromecasts have been acting up really badly recently, I've just gone and disabled guest mode on them all based on this information.

I think sehugg was talking about self noise ie the noise created by the AP's internal electronics

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

#159
post #30

Do not tilt the antenna though. Maximum emission of an dipole is perpendicular to its axis.

On occasion, going against the grain (in case of interference from another transmitter) can help if you can polarize the signal somehow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole_antenna Of course you'd have to do the same thing at the receiver.

you can for point to point use multiple ap with anteneas using differently polarised antenas - to increase the bandwidth

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

#160
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not needed to do it in both ends. Naturally, improving both antennas is better than doing in only one, but every improvement in sending is completely equivalent in receiving for a system that uses the same antennas for both directions of communication. So, if a new antenna in client side improves signal reception by 3dB, it also improves transmitted power by 3dB. If you used the same antenna on the other side, t…

> It's not needed to do it in both ends. Naturally, improving both antennas is better than doing in only one, but every improvement in sending is completely equivalent in receiving for a system that uses the same antennas for both directions of communication. Does this actually make sense to you? Gain is a factor; it needs to be multiplied by something. Here's the obvious thought-experiment: consider an (ideal) parab…

Your thought experiment is not in line with what OP is claiming. You would need to vary the dish size and see how that affects tx/rx.

Have you studied physics and antenna theory?

Post reply on HN