Terryl
06-01-2011, 06:42 PM
I have a friend that lives in an area that can’t get a good hi speed internet service without paying through the nose. (retired on low income)
So I came up with this plan to use his old BUD (he is not into satellite stuff) for a WIFI antenna.
Setting up a good hi-gain yagi at my place with a 2 watt WIFI booster on it, I modified his old BUD by removing the LNB assembly, in its place I installed a 2 watt USB WIFI transceiver, this is enclosed in a PVC weather shield.
Now for the tricky part, the run from the old dish back to the house is about 175 feet, there is no USB device or USB extension that will run this far, so what I did was to use a USB to CAT 5/6 adapter, this converts the USB signals to a CAT 5 or 6 cable.
This worked fine out to about 100 feet (bench test) but the DC power requirements for the 2 watt transmitter was a bit too much for anything above the 100 foot mark, so what I did was to use a powered USB hub at the dish end.
Luckily he had 1” conduit going out to the dish, in this conduit we ran the AC power for the USB hub, tested it and it worked great, it sees my place just fine, all this is inside the PVC weather shield and covered by the old LNB nose cone from the dish.
One draw back is the conversion from USB to CAT 5, instead of a 54 MbPS data rate you only get an 11 MbPS data rate, without going to a greater expense as this was all he could afford on the USB to CAT5 converters.
But 11 MbPS is far better then his old 56K dial up modem, he now has the same down/up load speeds as my system of 2 MbPS up and down.
10530 2 watt USB WIFI adapter.
10534 USB to CAT 5 adapters
10531 Lexan cover over antenna
10532 PVC weather shield
10533 How its mounted
So I came up with this plan to use his old BUD (he is not into satellite stuff) for a WIFI antenna.
Setting up a good hi-gain yagi at my place with a 2 watt WIFI booster on it, I modified his old BUD by removing the LNB assembly, in its place I installed a 2 watt USB WIFI transceiver, this is enclosed in a PVC weather shield.
Now for the tricky part, the run from the old dish back to the house is about 175 feet, there is no USB device or USB extension that will run this far, so what I did was to use a USB to CAT 5/6 adapter, this converts the USB signals to a CAT 5 or 6 cable.
This worked fine out to about 100 feet (bench test) but the DC power requirements for the 2 watt transmitter was a bit too much for anything above the 100 foot mark, so what I did was to use a powered USB hub at the dish end.
Luckily he had 1” conduit going out to the dish, in this conduit we ran the AC power for the USB hub, tested it and it worked great, it sees my place just fine, all this is inside the PVC weather shield and covered by the old LNB nose cone from the dish.
One draw back is the conversion from USB to CAT 5, instead of a 54 MbPS data rate you only get an 11 MbPS data rate, without going to a greater expense as this was all he could afford on the USB to CAT5 converters.
But 11 MbPS is far better then his old 56K dial up modem, he now has the same down/up load speeds as my system of 2 MbPS up and down.
10530 2 watt USB WIFI adapter.
10534 USB to CAT 5 adapters
10531 Lexan cover over antenna
10532 PVC weather shield
10533 How its mounted