Router antenna - do it yourself style

[viking60]

When the antenna on your 802.11g lets you down so you cannot sit in front of your house on the lawn, and enjoy a (free) beer while surfing on the internet. Then it is time to buy an antenna for your router so that it can reach out to you!
Or as it turns out, or you can build an antenna yourself that is just as good!

Fo WLAN in the 2,4-GHz-Band the antenna is so small that you easily can fix it with a piece of Styropor and some wire. After that, you can simply pull the construction over your access point antenna. This will work on devices that communicate over the 802.11b and 802.11g protokoll.

You will have to experiment with the lengt of the wire pieces and the distance between them because that is what makes the magic happen.
And a 802.11g/b with 2,4-GHz-Band will need a different build than a 802.11a in 5-GHz-Band.
But it will eventually work.

Rolf is herby given the task of making this antenna (Well you are in Constructions ) and give the exact length and distance

And just to make sure: This is no joke! It will work.
I will be back with the details......

[viking60]

Dimensions for the 2,4-GHz-Antenna
Length Distance
50 mm 122 mm
51 mm 88 mm
51,5 mm 57 mm
52 mm 31 mm
53 mm 9 mm
60 mm -25 mm

The cable you use is typically copper from an electriclal wire 0,74 mm2 or aproximately 1 mm thick.
You do not have to use copper you can use nails etc, but it must be a metal that leads well.

The body is 20 cm long piece of Styropor (or something ) You will find that in the box your PC came with - you are bound to find a piece somewhere.

Here are the tools - but you can use your teeth too

Mark up the distance between the wires

Use some glue that does not disolve the styropor (glue for wood will do) and glue on the wire pieces with same length on both sides of the body

Now it is time to pull your construction over the antenna. Exactly how far down you should pull it down varies (because the antennas are constructed diferently) and you need to check the signal strength on your laptop and get a slave to pull it up and down untill you say stop - or run a lot.
If you are superman with x-ray vision you need to place it where the thick white part starts:

Et voila you have bulit an antenna from your trash. Now that is recycling!

It is now time to go on the lawn and enjoy that beer, while surfing on bjoernvold.com

[rolf]

For cleverness, I say As a constructions guy I think I would sooner make a hole in the wall than go through this 'furniture building' sort of exercise. Here is a table for those using AWG as a wire gauge standard, such as USA. I would trust the high conductivity characteristic of copper and, in AWG, we see that the given cross-section values are somewhere between 19 ga, which I've never seen, and 18 ga, which is common, a low-current wire for bells and speakers and the like.

[viking60]

Oh c'mon you cannot deny that this is a profesjonell result:

But hole in the wall is brilliant too - why has no one made an instruction for that?
Thanks for the list over those cables with strange foreign measurements.

[rolf]

Yes, the beach walkie is quite amazing, for those not too inclined to jump into the wrong shoe during a senior moment.

[viking60]

Yeah that would be a Kodak moment

[gnuuser]

in essence this is a yagi antenna configuration
its quite an effective directional antenna and quite cute variations in the pics
great job finding the info on the wire length

[dedanna1029]

Methinks that in rolf's chart, by the turns I'm seeing in that thing, we're talking twisted pair cabling? What, cat 5? The only thing I did learn from Networking class. lol.

hhmmm, Boss, you should submit this to Instructables and ehow.

They would probably dig it at Make Use Of as well, where they have this great article right now... 8 Ways To Help Open-Source Projects If You’re Not A Coder

[viking60]

Cat 5 cables and connections and even Cat 6 are used for the ethernet, you connect them to a switch and a hub and router to hook up all your zillions of computers.
Makes a lot of salad in the computer room
See? That is all you need to know about networks. You probably would want to use aluminium or steel ducts to lead the cable around in the building if you are running a bank or something.
Polymer will not protect good enough.

[rolf]

Methinks that in rolf's chart, by the turns I'm seeing in that thing, we're talking twisted pair cabling?

American Wire Gauge, AWG, is a specification for both stranded and solid wire. If you strip off the insulation of a length of electrical wire, you will either see one wire or multiple strands twisted around one another to form the conductor. The turns in that table refer to the stranded style of wire. The overall diameter of conductor is the same for either in a given gauge but you should have the solid option for poking through your sandals.

[dedanna1029]

Thanks. Goes to show I really didn't learn that stuff.