SonicvanaJr Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 OK so the story starts out like this about five months ago I saw this article. http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-...d-dish-antenna/ Turning a old direct TV dish into a >40dBi antenna for wifi. Quite amazing if I do say so myself. I was of course intrigued instantly. So I started looking around ebay, and other sites. All were quite expensive. I then went to freecycle(very good for getting old stuff that no one wants), and signed up for my area newsletter. No luck there either. So one day my friend says to me, "Hey my neighbor just offered me his old sat dish you want it. Of course I responded yes. So a couple weeks pass, and the lazy kid never gets it down from his roof. I start getting angry. Well yesterday was the end of my anger. I'm on Spring Break so I go over to my friends house at about 11am, and help him paint for a couple hours, I suggest we take a break and try to get my sat dish down off his neighbors house. The kid had moved, and no one was living there so we figure why the heck not. So we get a ladder, and all the tools we will need, and head up onto the kids roof. 3 hours is how long it took to unscrew, and unmount the dang thing, but luckily we got it, and it's currently sitting by me in my room. All I have to do now is order the coaxial cable for it, and build the biquad element. Which I'm about to run to the hardware store to get supplies for. .. PICTUREIZE ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 /me starts pointing out the obviuse You know thats only for receiving signals right? You will need another on on the other computer/access point to be able to notice any improivment, and for the best chance you should equipe the computers/accpoint with a directional antena. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonicvanaJr Posted April 15, 2006 Author Share Posted April 15, 2006 Thank you captian OBVIOUS. Besides who said I'm looking to improve the connection between me and a AP? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/ While i was working for BT Broadband we used the wifi-wok method to help out with dodgey singles. Yup, it sounds dumb, no one belived me, but it actually worked. Got a family online with there wifi by getting the daughter to hold a wok behind the USB wireless dongle and point it at the router (big house, listed building, 2' thick stone walls, router on far side of house due to dumb phone enginer). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 Thats generaly the point of getting directional radio equipment. So you can focus the signal in one direction so you can move further away in that direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 I’ve used this type of equipment before and it works well, I don’t know how well the home made version will work. MAXRAD XtremeWave Parabolic Dish Antennas http://www.blackbox.com/Catalog/Detail.asp...44&mid=4692 If I really want to send data a long distance (point to point) I tend to go with lazars as you can get 1 to 2Gbps and it’s much more secure. This will give you 1Gbps but you can get faster ones. http://www.blackbox.com/Catalog/Detail.asp...98&mid=4710 It would be difficult to make one your self but not impossible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melodic Posted April 15, 2006 Share Posted April 15, 2006 looks like SonicvanaJr is after some free wifi ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonicvanaJr Posted April 17, 2006 Author Share Posted April 17, 2006 Acutally I'm not. After some network access maybe :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
armadaender Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 I was planning to do the same thing this summer with my old DSS dish that's still on the back of my house. After wardriving around my neighborhood I know all the homes without encryption and even the ones with default (admin:admin) logins. If this works, summer will be fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melodic Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 I was planning to do the same thing this summer with my old DSS dish that's still on the back of my house. After wardriving around my neighborhood I know all the homes without encryption and even the ones with default (admin:admin) logins. If this works, summer will be fun. you must have nothing better to do all summer :S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 You know, i have a full sized old analoge dish atached to my house, it's compleatly unused, we stopped subscribing to sky ages ago. If I had any wireless equipment at all i might be tempted to take it down and use it for some thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
armadaender Posted April 18, 2006 Share Posted April 18, 2006 I was planning to do the same thing this summer with my old DSS dish that's still on the back of my house. After wardriving around my neighborhood I know all the homes without encryption and even the ones with default (admin:admin) logins. If this works, summer will be fun. you must have nothing better to do all summer :S Oh I do: I work a lot but I always have a few projects lined up every summer to keep me from going insane. This year I’m building/doing: 1. A collapsible beer-pong table with Firefox for the theme 2. Terabyte server for my apartment next semester (for my music, dvds, etc) 3. mod the old satellite dish into a wardriving tool 4. Mess with my xbox (linux, xbms, something) 5. and possibly build my own tivo or just buy one, who knows. The only reason why I know of all homes that have unencrypted APs or their user names and passwords in my neighborhood is because a friend of mine wanted to learn how to hack wireless APs. So, I took him wardriving around one night and showed him the ropes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonicvanaJr Posted April 19, 2006 Author Share Posted April 19, 2006 Right now I'm waiting to order 25' of WBC400 cable. Which should happen tommarow, and I'm going to work on building the element this weekend. Can you believe $15 for 24" by 12" of sheet metal. I about died. Everything else was pretty cheap though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheZ Posted April 19, 2006 Share Posted April 19, 2006 dude i am going to do/want to do #'s 2,4,5 this summer :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted April 19, 2006 Share Posted April 19, 2006 I'm currently finalizing work on #2 (11 x 200 GB RAID5 = 2TB :P ). After that I'm going to work on #5 (MythTV specifically). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheZ Posted April 19, 2006 Share Posted April 19, 2006 i might start the mythTV thing soon. I saved up enough to buy a tv tuner card for it. i just need another hdd and i think i would be set :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted April 19, 2006 Share Posted April 19, 2006 I litraly 2 hours ago got my HVR-1300, but MythTV can't find any channles :/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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