WIFI Antenna Hack!

Step 9 All Done!

Looks pretty good! You get a more omni-directional output (less fiddling with exact antenna placement) and approx. 5 dB gain. It works REALLY well on both your wireless cards and routers. See my video to see the results, and Digg this if you like my very first Instructable! 8D

Comments

[craobhruadh]

Anarky to answer your question.....It works very well!. My little girls computers are sharing a wireless internet connection. And their placement is a little lacking IE behind a couch...ever try to argue fashion versus function with a woman?....yah..

.Their wireless card has a similar antenna to the one on my old D-link so dust off yee ole G router and steal it's antenna.

well I didn't have any copper cable around until I remembered I was sitting on tons of coax.

So I stripped it out (use a pair of wire strippers or you will chop it in half) followed his directions to a T, minus i went with a paper-mate pen casing in stead of a straw, it is stronger and similar to the real casing comes in a variety of colors and has a cool pointy tip :).

with the old antenna I was getting a .85 megabit pull on speed test. with two little girls playing online Pokeman games sharing the same wireless it was bad. But add the antenna hack and it went up to 2.87 Megabits. to confirm this I put the old one back on and retested right back down to .85- .89

took me 5 minutes to make this thing (butane soldering iron is the bomb)

I cant thank him enough a nickle worth of old sat cable saved me 30 bucks and the headache from my girls "daddy my internet sucks"

Havent heard from them in days.

Now I will see if this ups my wireless bridge as well!!!!!!!! Burhahahahah cough cough

[SIRJAMES09]

I have a Q:

I have an old CB antennae that has been sitting around for like forever...would that work?? *evil grin*

I know that I would have to build a base for it & all that, but if it'll work to REALLY pull in the net or whatever, then it will have some purpose.....otherwise its trash

[irishjim68]

You would have to make sure the length of the antenna is correct for the resonant frequency (or part thereof). Most mobile type CB antennas range from 2-8.5 feet in length, which is the proper length for 1/4 to full wave resonance on the 11 meter 26.000 to 28.000 MHz CB band. As wifi broadcasts on 2.4 GHz the resonant length would be quite a bit shorter.

[BreakTheChains]

Yeah I tried to ghetto this and it didn't work so well. I think I made it worse. It was on an old crappy belkin router anyways though so I don't really care. I think the problem arose when I didn't solder it together and instead just kinda rapped it around. I didn't use the same thickness wire either.

[babblin5]

I used 20 gauge solid copper insulated wire, but you'd want to keep it between 18-22 gauge for it to be effective. You do want a solid solder joint in order for the element to efficiently load the RF into the antenna...

[Sawyl]

Never just 'wrap' the wires together to connect them. Always use either a butt connector (a.k.a crimp) or solder them. Plus, use the best quality wire you can.

Very old, kinked, bent etc wire risk you having breaks inside the coating. So, for those who didn't get the desired results, go back, use new wire (either magnetic wire with a non-plastic coating,--will need to be sanded at the ends for connecting) or a quality 16 to 12 gauge coated wire that has many wire fibers inside the coating, versus a single piece of solid metal ( too easily broken internally without knowing).

Again... NO wrapping the wires together... NO electrical tape to connect them... NO glue gun to connect them!!!
USE rosin core solder, or use a butt connector (a.k.a. Crimp) spend the 2-4$ on the crimps if you don't have a soldering iron... Worth it every time!

[BreakTheChains]

Ok I'll thanks. I'll do it correctly some day but I did it half assed purposely.

[BaysideBecca]

What size screw did you use? At 2.4GHz, the difference in the inductive loading could make or break the tuning of the antenna.

[Seneca_Flyboy]

Its a common Drywall Screw, not with Fine Thread.

[Rotten194]

From the video I estimate it was 2 inches long, and 1/4 of an inch wide. Does that help?

[wout smeets]

 can close te tip with an glue gun

[nunyafb]

Just a brief Thought. Based on my experience from the good old days of "CB" radios Good Buddy tuning the antenna made a huge difference if the efficiency of the antenna this was accomplished by adjusting the length of the antenna. I can't help believing that such tuning would not be beneficial to this instructable. Someone with better knowledge than myself should be able to provide some insight into this. Also as a side note again based only on my previous understanding the twisting of the wire only reduces the amount of space the antenna uses, I.E. it shortens the extended wire from lets say 1 ft total length to a shorter 8 inch length thus taking up less space. Again I may be wrong and would really like to hear if anyone has better info on this. Great instructable with the right adjustments could be an excellent one. Please send me an email and let me know if have any of these insigts.

[bozzchem]

I'll show my lack of knowledge by asking if this could help those of us out in the sticks using EVDO to get what they "claim" to be a broadband signal. My WiFi Linksys WRT54GX router doesn't need any help. I could get a signal from it anywhere, anytime when I lived in the city between my three computers and had a cable connection feeding it the primary signal. Now I'm in the sticks and am using a Sierra 595U just to get connectivity. I'm hitting about 200KB on downloads....obviously a big change from the cable days. I need help getting a better EVDO Rev. A signal. If this is completely off topic, I apologize. I've seen the $250 packages that claim to get me a better signal but I'd rather bypass them and see if you gurus can help. Thanks.

[lukkbox]

take a peice of card

wrap it in some tinfoil

fold it into a curve shape

place behind your wifi antennae

i've increased my connection by 600%

cost = 10p?

want me to do an instructable?

[Zak]

I suppose you already moved the modem to a high spot with a free view, as far as USB will let you.

You will at least need to know the location of the tower.

A low-tech way could be a parabolic that is fairly deep. A wok pan might work, with the device in the focal point. This has to be outside and weatherproofed.

A more high-tech way would be to figure out the frequency (1900 MHz I think) and build an antella, for example 'barbie's tv antenna' from http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/MicroTVAerial (see also http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/DirectionalYagi for other choices to scale). Keep in mind that everything in the design will need to be larger by a factor of 24/19, so the first element will not be 61 mm but 77 mm. And the wire need to be thicker as well, from 1.5 mm2 to something 1.74 mm diameter. In the US that would be 13 or 14 gauge wire.

Keep the antenna cable short (cables have huge losses) and a few elements should already give good results.

[bobf]

Good article, but unless I missed something, how long is the wire AFTER the coil? You only give the length for the bottom side. Thank you.

[lrlandusky]

I think it's listed in step 3: 2.75", then start wrapping, then 0.75" to the bottom. Hope this helps.

[karona]

Tried this today on a linksys router, (both antennae) and improved the signal strength at the far end of the house (Bulgarian, 4 foot thick granite walls) from 'poor' to 'very good'. This means I can now stream TV to the laptop whilst in bed, so I'm a happy puppy!!! Keith Razdel SE Bulgaria

[pyper]

I just built one for my wireless G card as its no longer my primary means of accessing the internet and decided to do some signal strength tests using net stumbler. No Ant -63 dbm Stock Ant -40 dbm Modded Ant -34 dbm All numbers are rough (read the graph by eye, not much care about orientation / polarisation although the location is almost identical) but your looking at a 6db (4 fold) gain which is nothing to complain about.

[pyper]

slight Caveat to my above post. While the orientations were very similar , i have found that playing with the orientation can give you significant differences in signal strength. i still believe this is better than stock but don't take my apparent 6db gain for gospel. I would repeat the "experiment" more rigorously but I have destroyed my original ant.

[anarky]

Can we get some more comments from people who have tried this? I have an old Linksys router, and its broadcasting antenna doesn't provide that strong of a signal. If I could boost the signal just by doing this, I'd love it. But at the same time, I don't want to ruin my router's antenna or make it worse if it doesn't work. Thanks for the awesome hack! I hope people get clearly positive results!