That is quite a lot of money. I knew it is expensive, so I figured I might make my own. What if I were to run current through the dish?
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Satellite dish wireless network
I'm primarily wondering about how the FCC would permit what I'd like to do.
I have a 36" oval satellite dish someone gave to me for free. It's pretty cool. Can I get an RG5 to SMA cable - or crimp one - and take the dish over to my wireless adapter? I would like to do this for a friend of mine as well. He lives 11.1 driving miles away, but a straight line from my house to his house, according to satellite footage and careful calculation, is only 4.447613714593560250154839
So, I want to go ~4.45 miles SSE (south-southeast) with a satellite-to-satellite network. I've seen this satellite setup done before, but it was only across a clear street. That's a bit overkill, but it works. I live in a treeless suburb, and my friend lives in a treeful suburb. How feasible is this?
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Answers
Just any current ?
You need a whole transmission and reception system. It is very complex. It also works on different protocols than your local network. I have a very minor background in electronics and I wouldn't even consider trying to build my own. Most site to site wireless networks do not even use a satellite dish type antennae.
Could I use pringles can antennae? I've heard of it done for over 7 miles with 802.11b. I've also seen pictures of one cantenna going over 1 mile to a stock WRT54G. Hawking makes a device that amplifies antennae in some way, and it uses DC power. It's supposed to add upwards of 10 dBi. How much dBi would I need to go 4.5 miles?
Afraid not. A couple of years ago I had to set up a wireless for a client that had 2 sites, 7 km apart and no line of site. However, we could access by a shorter route by transmitting to a tall water tower and bouncing back to the second site. We had to buy 2 sets of equipment due to the mid point. Trust me , we looked for "cheap" solutions. Even with that gear, it worked very well, but due to wind, snow, ice and the occasional misguided crows knocking the antennae, it failed on many occasions and required numerous climbs to the top of the tower. Since replaced with fiber, a much more stable method.
Try this:
http://www.usbwifi.orcon.n
~10 miles, it's not too near by you but i know there are telescopic antennaz for (2.4GHz) the freq your wireless NIC is going, antennaz that extend a lot the range.
You do not forget it's about emitting - receiving signals. TV dishes use a feedhorn to collect the microwaves whos section is function the wave length, above 10 GHz, do you also use a feedhorn?
Have you a diagram to this, or the ones you saw?
>Hawking makes a device that amplifies antennae in some way, and it uses DC power
>>>The great physicist that has gone to the beginning of the U back in time?
A such device look familiar to me and could be an amplifier and my opinion is you'll need it togrther with a telescopic antena and will be all ok.
I hope your dish is not an offset.
I didn't grasp your last comment, radomirthegreat.
Now i see, only 4.4 miles, how did you avaluate so exactly the straight line from your house to your friend house, it's a curiosity?
This is the sort of questions I like, someone who is actually doing the project for the fun of it. The reason I undertake most of my work, and particularily in answering questions on experts exchange. I started my career many moons ago, as an radio ham with an interest in all things RF, and then over the years have become more involved in data comms and networking. If you look at a lot of my posts on EE you will likely see me bigging up antennas.
Its an interesting idea you have there.
The main trouble is that the dish you currently have was likely designed as a receive only antenna. And therefore may be little or no use as a TX/RX antenna. There are however many websites out there who are able to sel you high gain antennas already made, and probably the same amount of websites again who can offer you advice on how to build your own. Such as the pringles can you have already mentioned. There are so many designs for antennas and most can be built yourself from various items in and around the home.
The key things to remember are the fact that the gain of the antenna is more important than the power you feed in. As is having a good directional polarisation, so as not to waste what RF energy you are putting in there. You should be able to cover the distance with normal equipment if you are using a good home made antenna.
What I cannot guarantee is the legality of doing so. The licence free frequences that WLAN equipment operates n is subject to strict conditions involving the ERP (Effective Radiated Power) which is of course increased the more power you feed into the antennas or the higher gain the antenna you are using.
By using a directional antenna with a good bit of gain at both ends of the link there is no reason you should not be able to easily achieve the 4.5 miles you need. However you may find the link is severly affected by things like rain, snow, etc after all 4.5miles of rain is quite a barrier for anyone.
I will trawl the web and try to find some of the websites which may help you design your own personal antenna. If you need any help or feel you want to discuss any of the links I submit later or anything else, please post back and either myself or someone else may be able to help you.
I hope this is not too confusing and at least makes some sense, regards, rich.
http://www.turnpoint.net/w
http://www.seattlewireless
http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/pro
http://www.arrl.org/tis/in
In adition to this small list of websites there are hundreds more, not to mention the various books that are available not neccesarily directly related to WLAN antennas but antenna design in general.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0
THis covers all sorts of projects, which if you find yourself becoming really into this project and improving the designs, developing and expermenting, you may find useful.
Hope you can make sense of this. I am in the proces of developing a website dedicated to all things technical suport of WLAN systemsa based. unfortunately I suspect this may not be up and running completely before the end of the year, I will try and lay down some diagrams which may assist you. Hope you find what you are looking for.
regards, rich.
Visual3DMaya:
"I didn't grasp your last comment, radomirthegreat.
Now i see, only 4.4 miles, how did you avaluate so exactly the straight line from your house to your friend house, it's a curiosity?"
I suggested using many, many wireless adapters to reach a whole lot of unencrypted wireless networks. I would bridge all of these together for an incredible net transfer speed boost. I hope that clarifies that last comment, which is hopefully a joke.
As for the distance, I used satellite images (accounting for the bend of the Earth). I found my house's latitute & longitude, and the same for his house. Then, I calculated the distance - in miles - straight up between the latitudonal lines. Next, I calculated the distance between the longitudonal lines. I used the Pythagorean theorem, and Windows Calculator gave me the answer to the nearest 30th decimal point. I thought that was funny, so I posted it. The distance should be very close to that, but it's not that exact. Sorry if that's disappointing.
wally2k7, thanks a lot for the great links. I haven't yet had the chance to look through all of them, but I will have a more thorough read soon. This looks like a great start, though.
Hi ridges,
Do you think that the ridges of the waveguide can have any effect to the gain, have been tested ridge less cans? Sorry, i'm not so documented about this but i'm interested too, maybe as a former rarioamateur long ago.
@radomirthegreat
I like your project, the method for the distance didn't think about it, never needed, and i think it could be more accurate than with a GPS, have you done a comparison?
Sorry for mistakes, it was:
Hi wally2k7,
Do you think that the ridges of the waveguide can have any effect to the gain, have been tested ridge less cans? Sorry, i'm not so documented about this but i'm interested too, maybe as a former rarioamateur long ago.
@radomirthegreat
I like your project, the method for the distance didn't think about it, never needed, and i think it could be more accurate than with a GPS, have you done a comparison?
sorry about that I obviosly didnt read your last comment correctly, otherwise I would have posted a comment myself.
This is a good question,
I would suggest yes, they would make a difference, even a slight change can affect the propogation of the antenna. would they affect it significantly, I dont know!!, would they improve the design or make it worse, again I dont know.
I suspect any affects would be minimal, and the only way you would be able to see is with some pretty hefty test equipment, 2 equal designs to compare, and a nice controlled experiment. On the plus side, you have given me something to think about.
As yet I have not built any of these antennas, I tend to just by bespoke designs, clients tend not to like it when you suggest a baked bin or pringles can design!! but I have been looking to try it myself for a while, maybe this wold be an ideal project to try for my new website, do the whole comparison thing.
Thanks Visual3DMaya, for the thoughts.
best 73's to you
Rich M0RMB
Thanks... to you too...
I'm thinking, what about more than one can, they are cheaper than 100$ :), put them [1] near by each other but it might need some distance between, or fix one such can [2] in the focus of a parabola.
{more area from you collect the waves, more the gain of signal}
For [1] it might need for sure another box to enter the cables to sum the signals and put them in phase, its output to the wireless NIC or AP. It might need a sticky fine tuning, you should need performant meters.
This [2] i don't know if already tested by someone but why didn't it work, especially this particular case of radomirthegreat.
The space here doesn't allow me to such tests so .... anxious to see Rich's site.
I really like the way this is coming along. I like 3DMaya's suggestion of many cantennae, and I should be trying this shortly. It'll be a lot of fun. Thank you very much for the awesome comments.
I would like to know, though, about grounding. I'm considering shoving a giant antenna on a very long copper pole. Would this help much? A friend of mine put a yagi antenna on a copper pole and with a Hawking signal amplifier (http://shop4.outpost.com/
Yeah I also like the idea of many antennas, i suspect it will serve in a similar way to adding additional directors to a Yagi, in that it will make the antena more focussed and therefore higher gain in the direction you want.
You will need to do some form of combining on the signal, normally this is used so that one antenna can be used by several transmitters, but I see no reason why one transmitter could not be set to use several antennas, most WIFI routers have 2 antennas already, so if using one of this all the combining neccessary should already have been carried out by your product manufacturer.
Will look forward to seeing the results of this one and will definately try to bring forward a website of some description, by the looks of this one question alone, it looks like an idea for me to put a forum on there.
regards, rich.
I have a few antenna design books at work, unfortunately I will not be there until the weekend, I will try to rememeber to pick tem up, and then can try and design a high gain yagi so that we can start doing some tests on it. Maybe this can be the starting of the website.
Its realy nice and refreshng to see that there are some other people out there who are interested in what can be done, just becase they are genuinly iterested. I hope that this questio develops into quite a good resource for anyone interested actually.
Thanks to you one and all.
Rich
If you choose cantennas method, which i didn't know about it until now, i'll go with the parabola as a first try because think how many can's section areas are covered by area defined by its diameter. Otherwise all these cans should be pointed one by one onto the other set of cantennas and the signal summed too, that seems dificult enough.
As i understood cantenna takes the role of a waveguide for 2.4GHz, so put it in parabola's focus of course with open side to it and fine tune it on all axis by turn. Success ! !
I'd try more cantennas method if i'd not have a parabola.
If it don't reflects ok, paint it with adequate reflexive paint or place Al sheets on it, i don't know, just ideas.
Now i am that who didn't see your posting, our posts almost matched... in an hour time.
So you wally2k7 wish to start design Yagis for WI-FI, for 2.4GHs as i can think. I remember long long time ago, when i was too much free time to spare, when even XT processor (i think before 186) wasn't invented, i started once to make a some kind of Yagi like antena but so small as i'd not be surprized to work now in wi-fi range lol.
Best wishes!
I am just on my way down to the DIY shop to pick up some metal etc, I am going to try and build an antenna today, with a boom length of approximately 1200mm I estimate it will have a gain of just over 16dB not too sure how long it will take to build. But I will let you know how the trials go on it.
Really looking forward to it actually.
Hope everyone elses experiments go okay!!
Look forward to comparing results.
Rich
I'm sorry - I just now read the website thing. Do we want to start one? I have a web hosting biz, so we can do this if you'd like.
My friend with a yagi put a Pringles can on his antenna, but it kept moving around. Whenever the can would touch the yagi, even a rubber tip, it would cancel out the signal. We got the antenna "perfectly" centered inside the can, but the signal actually went down. I'm sure, though, that we didn't do something well enough. The yagi is longer than the can, so that may make some difference.
I have a number of domain names, I plan on using one of them specifically to host my intended website for computers and electronics projects and hopefully to drum up some business, unfortunately this sort of thing takes time, to do the projects, write them up and get them on the web, I have a few old servers lying around which I intend to utilise at home for this purpose.
As i say it is just finding the time to write everything up.
I want to try and get a forum on etc in order that people can discuss projects such as this.
Rich
Though an interesting discussion on antennae design, most of this post does not address the question. Only the first parts suggest the answer is; you cannot simply attach a satellite dish to a wireless adapter. Whether that qualifies for points, I will leave that in the hands of the moderators.
--Rob
radomir,
I would really appreciate it if you could close this Q. I use a lot of time helping to close Questions, and it is always best if the asker closes them himself. Also you mention that you liked the way the thread progressed, so you could assign points to those that gave you the best insight, and also give a short summory of why you accepted those answers.
Thanks,
rindi,
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by: RobWillPosted on 2007-06-05 at 19:18:22ID: 19222236
There is a lot more to it than connecting your wireless antennae to a satellite dish I am afraid. It is just not that simple. For starters your network adapters doesn't have nearly enough output.
You can buy a basic wireless point to point system for 3-5 kilometers, line of site, no trees, for about $3000.