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#1 2005-05-20 12:07 am
- ironhawk
- Shai Dorsai!
- From: San Francisco
- Registered: 2001-10-16
- Posts: 3080
My NEW External Airport Antenna... Hehe
As mentioned in my iBook Clamshell thread, I've been using my iBook as the wireless broadband server for my G4 Frankintosh.
While my build photos of the Frankintosh show the Airport antenna connected to the old AGP's metal chasis, I never moved the antenna to the new chasis ( so what, I got lazy ).
So, what does this mean? It means I was left with the old metal shell, Airport cables still attached...
... meaning I have one HUGE external antenna, as the old G4 chasis IS the antenna.
Well, the iBook already gets great reception, able to receive a signal from virtually every wireless network in the neighborhood, to include my own, but I decided to lift the keyboard and attach the G4 chasis to the Airport card mounted in the iBook, and see what happens next.
WOW 
!
I have the old chasis behind my drafting table, and it provides nearly twice the signal strength and reception of the iBook's internal antenna.
OH, as a disclaimer, I am NOT advocating piracy or network hacking, and such is NOT supported by MacAddict or its affiliates.
< However, I am drafting up a more portable version for you wardrivers out there 
>
Campy humour and tactless hints aside, I really am working on a more compact solution.
I'll likely scrap parts from the old G4 case. I don't honestly believe I need the entire thing, and may be able to come up with a portable solution which will be as effective or possibly better.
Now where's my ruler and vellum?
Last edited by ironhawk (2005-05-20 12:48 am)
All posts on the internet are postfixed by an invisible "IMHO". It's not in the html code, either.
-titok16
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#2 2005-05-20 12:27 am
- NightCougar_37
- For Gallia!!
- From: The back of my Twilight Drake
- Registered: 2001-07-22
- Posts: 9143
Re: My NEW External Airport Antenna... Hehe
Wish my Cube and iBook got better Airport reception here. I know i'll be watchin this thread closely 
.
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#3 2005-05-20 9:39 pm
- mostly harmless
- Member
- Registered: 2004-05-13
- Posts: 37
Re: My NEW External Airport Antenna... Hehe
Antennas are easy to build. All you need is a pigtail (short length of special co-ax cable) with the right connector for the airport card and a N-Male adapter, and the N-Female adapter to attach to your antenna. I built a Double Bi-Quad design and it works great. There are a lot of other designs out there as well. I got my pigtail and two female adapters from eBay, seller name was sharktaco.
Here is a link for the design I used-
http://martybugs.net/wireless/biquad/double.cgi
I modified it to use the female N connector behind the copper instead of his short piece of co-ax. I also built a single Bi-Quad which fits inside a tuperware container and suction cups to my windshield for wardriving. I found my clamshell iBook has such great reception the external antenna wasn't really needed though. With the single antenna I was getting signals from the next block over or farther rather than the street I was on.
It seems like you might be able to snake the connector into the cube through an air hole. Might be worth a try if your reception is that bad.
On the other hand you might want to just boost the signal from your base station as shown here-
http://flakey.info/airport/
that would give you a better signal for the cube and your laptop.
Last edited by mostly harmless (2005-05-20 9:44 pm)
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#4 2005-05-21 5:35 am
- Orion
- Bovi-sapiens
- From: America's Dairyland
- Registered: 2000-09-12
- Posts: 2959
Re: My NEW External Airport Antenna... Hehe
In the last Family Handyman magazine, they had an article on how to install a cell phone booster in your home. They had internal antennas, an external antenna, and a bi-directional signal booster, plus coax cable to connect it all. I wonder if something like that would work for airport. I am interested in connecting my house network to our barn wirelessly so I can have a computer out there for records that can get online. I will keep an eye on this thread as well.
Farming is easy when your plow is a pencil and you are a thousand miles from the cornfield. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
Don't curse the farmer with your mouth full.
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#5 2005-05-21 11:48 am
- mostly harmless
- Member
- Registered: 2004-05-13
- Posts: 37
Re: My NEW External Airport Antenna... Hehe
There are signal boosters availible for wi-fi but you probably don't need one. At the most you would need an extra antenna on both ends. Commercial ones are availible but as I said above you can build on yourself much easier and cheaper. I have connected with my double bi-quad from as far away a 1/4 mile to an access point that didn't have an extra antenna, if you put one on your home network you could beam a signal all the way to the back 40. The other possibility is to use a USB adapter, they can work pretty well if you have the right driver for OS X. see this link- http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/
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#6 2005-05-22 4:27 pm
- Orion
- Bovi-sapiens
- From: America's Dairyland
- Registered: 2000-09-12
- Posts: 2959
Re: My NEW External Airport Antenna... Hehe
mostly harmless wrote:
There are signal boosters availible for wi-fi but you probably don't need one. At the most you would need an extra antenna on both ends. Commercial ones are availible but as I said above you can build on yourself much easier and cheaper. I have connected with my double bi-quad from as far away a 1/4 mile to an access point that didn't have an extra antenna, if you put one on your home network you could beam a signal all the way to the back 40. The other possibility is to use a USB adapter, they can work pretty well if you have the right driver for OS X. see this link- http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/
My only problem is that the barn has 3' thick stone walls and steel siding where this computer would be located. I can hardly get reception on my two-way radio or my cell phone there. I could try getting a signal though. It is about 250 feet from the house to the barn. I should have buried Cat-5 cable this past summer when they dug up the yard to bury the new power lines. It would have been so simple then but I didn't think of it then. 
Last edited by Orion (2005-05-22 4:29 pm)
Farming is easy when your plow is a pencil and you are a thousand miles from the cornfield. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
Don't curse the farmer with your mouth full.
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#7 2005-05-22 5:07 pm
- ironhawk
- Shai Dorsai!
- From: San Francisco
- Registered: 2001-10-16
- Posts: 3080
Re: My NEW External Airport Antenna... Hehe
mostly harmless wrote:
Antennas are easy to build. All you need is a pigtail (short length of special co-ax cable) with the right connector for the airport card and a N-Male adapter, and the N-Female adapter to attach to your antenna. I built a Double Bi-Quad design and it works great. There are a lot of other designs out there as well. I got my pigtail and two female adapters from eBay, seller name was sharktaco.
Here is a link for the design I used-
http://martybugs.net/wireless/biquad/double.cgi
I modified it to use the female N connector behind the copper instead of his short piece of co-ax. I also built a single Bi-Quad which fits inside a tuperware container and suction cups to my windshield for wardriving. I found my clamshell iBook has such great reception the external antenna wasn't really needed though. With the single antenna I was getting signals from the next block over or farther rather than the street I was on.
It seems like you might be able to snake the connector into the cube through an air hole. Might be worth a try if your reception is that bad.
On the other hand you might want to just boost the signal from your base station as shown here-
http://flakey.info/airport/
that would give you a better signal for the cube and your laptop.
The tupperware sector antenna ( shown in the second link ) has my attention.
I'm thinking of doing something similar, now, with the old G4 tower.
There are two spots on the chasis, where the Airport antenna connects, using a Y-shaped antenna cable.
I plan on putting a small sector antenna, around the same size used in the tupperware kit, at each end of the Y, with some suction cups to mount in a window.
That ought to do quite well.
Last edited by ironhawk (2005-05-22 5:10 pm)
All posts on the internet are postfixed by an invisible "IMHO". It's not in the html code, either.
-titok16
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#8 2005-05-24 3:30 pm
Re: My NEW External Airport Antenna... Hehe
My only problem is that the barn has 3' thick stone walls and steel siding where this computer would be located. I can hardly get reception on my two-way radio or my cell phone there. I could try getting a signal though. It is about 250 feet from the house to the barn. I should have buried Cat-5 cable this past summer when they dug up the yard to bury the new power lines. It would have been so simple then but I didn't think of it then.
I have almost the exact situation (except I'm in a wood-stud addition *behind* the stone/concrete/steel garage). If it makes you feel better, less than a year after I spent $500+ on a trencher and Cat-5e cables, a single nearby lightning strike fried the whole thing (including the hubs/routers at either end). Doh! 250-300ft is getting close to the max for Cat-5 anyway and that definitely effected performance. At the time, wireless wasn't an inexpensive (or fast) solution, so I went backwards in the tech tree and threw a few extra coax cables in the ground when Comcast was hooking up my garage-addition/office for cable tv. A few bucks later I had a pair of Netgear hubs with Cat-5 and coax to intertwine my home and office networks. It's only 10mb, but 100% reliable so far.
Having said all that, I'm looking into wireless again. I have a Linksys WRT54G in the house, but the signal dies about 20' short of the garage (definitely not getting through any concrete by itself). Since I'm essentially trying to tie two networks together (home and office), my "geekier than I" friend said I needed a wireless bridge. Products with the name "bridge" in them are typically more expensive than plain wireless routers (my WRT54G was $39 on sale). His official suggestion is to buy two more WRT54G's as they can run in a bridge mode as opposed to their typical router mode (and the firmware is opensource and highly customizable). I'll put one in the back of the house (perhaps with a wired connection to the rest of the house stuff - not sure on that yet), and the other in the front window of the garage (again, with cables to reach behind to the office).
I have a good feeling that I'll need to buy/make some kind of antenna for one or both sides of this bridge (which is why this thread caught my eye), so I'll be keeping an eye here too. My apologies for the long (and my first, btw) post here, but I couldn't help but share my experiences with someone in the same oddball situation I'm in. 
Of course more eyes looking at my situation can't hurt either. It probably won't be difficult to outsmart me and offer a cheaper/better/faster/etc solution to the problem (which I wholeheartedly welcome!).
Hope to brainstorm will more of y'all soon!
Aaron
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