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Solar WiFi Pineapple Briefcase


factgasm

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I really appreciate the video and the answers and so I have some follow up questions:

  • What I don't get with this set up is if this is a bi-directional link between the Pineapple on the hill-top and laptop in the office, why have two different types of antennas? Could you use two flat panels? Could you use two yagis? If not why not?
  • Also just out of interest what would you estimate the distance to have been between the two in the video?
  • What is the furthest distance you have tried?
  • How badly will foilage (trees/bushes), metal structures or brick walls affect the signal between the two?
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Hello factgasm,

To answer a few of your questions:

- There is no reason that you couldn't use two different types of directional antennas (eg. yagi on one end, panel on the other). Though the yagi will most likely have higher gain, depending on how its built.

- I personally have stretched wifi over a mile with just 100mw of power on each end. The conditions were close to ideal (both stations atop a hill, with no obstructions in between), and I was also using some pretty powerful antennas. The setup was entirely home built, using a bi-quad at each end, feeding an 18" dish. The signal strengths were good, so I think that I could have easily gotten away with quite a bit further, assuming that I could stay clear of the obstructions.

- Trees, metal, and brick will all degrade your signal pretty significantly. If you are looking to create a pretty long range link you should do some research. Specifically into something called the 'fresnel zone'.

I am an avid amateur radio operator and very much enjoy building and testing my own antennas. You can pretty easily build some very high quality antennas if you are a bit handy, and willing to do it yourself. Hope that this helps! :)

-Andy V

P.S. Here is a link to an interesting read. A 279km wifi link. ;) http://www.ab9il.net/wlan-projects/EnlaceAguila_Baul_EN.pdf

Edited by andyfive
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Hi andyfive,

Thanks, I appreciate the answer, but I'm still a little hazy on why two different antennas in the video?

Why not just the same type of antenna at each end? (Such as yagi to yagi or flat to flat). Is there a tecnhical reason for this?

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To the best of my knowledge, there would be no particular reason to use two different antennas. My guess would be that either A). Those antennas are what he had laying around, or B). It's probably more convenient to mount the panel antenna in the window, as seen in the video. Maybe Darren could chime in with that actual reason for the different antennas? :smile:

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I wasn't able to find this the other day, but I wanted to also include it. It's got a lot of very useful information if you are planning any sort of medium-to-long distance wifi links. http://wireless.fcc.gov/outreach/2004broadbandforum/comments/YDI_microwavelink.pdf

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