Anyways, I have been long-plagued by frequent disconnects from the router for no reason at all (as all you who have talked to me on AIM know, lol). It was so bad sometimes I wondered why I bother with getting on in the first place.
I even got a longer antenna with a cord for moving it around to find the best place to get a signal. I managed to get 5 bars, but it still disconnected randomly and was freakishly slow.
I couldn't even load a 5 minute video without it stopping laoding halfway through from a disconnect. Uploading pics? Forget about it! This was why I haven't been around much, it just plain wasn't working.
But today I finally got fed up and decided to try making a cantenna, on the crazy chance that it could penetrate through the neighbors trees, house and get to their wonderful free access wi-fi (I found it while biking around with my DS and mario kart, heh) and ditch this pathetic excuse of a connection. I didn't think it would work, since they are several blocks down, and there are a lot of trees along the way.
So roughly following the instructions, I found a big pineapple juice can and emptied it (drinking juice now *slurp*). I needed to know where to put the wire part then. The height of the can was 7" and the diameter was 4.25". So I punched that into the calculator on the page, and got 1.63". So I drilled a hole 1.63" from the bottom as it said.
Then I read how many different connectors it listed to buy and use. Forget that. I'm too impatient, I don't have the money, and they aren't needed for it to function! I just used some shielded wire and solder. The shielded wire I used was from an old broken NES RF connector cable, but anything will work. Wire from RCA cables are the same thing.
So I stripped both ends of the RF cable, then soldered the outside part of the cable (the copper braid looking stuff, which btw, works awesome as desoldering braid!) to the outside of the can. I then stuck the middle wire of the cable through the hole in the can, so that it was sticking through about 1.21" as the web page said (a little bit farther in actually, since I didn't have a connector as they did). Then the cable was hot glued in place from the outside, so that the middle wire was sticking straight into the can.
Then I took apart the old, very tiny, and worthless stock antenna that came with my belkin wireless card. I needed it for the connector. So I took it apart (the plastic part just slipped off).
(pretty crapy eh? They expect that tiny little wire to work?!?!)
Then I cut off the metal piece and stripped the wires. Then I soldered the other end of the RF cable to it, the outside copper braid to the outside copper braid, and the middle wire to the middle wire. Then covered it in hot glue. Then wrapped in electrical tape (i was in a hurry if you can't tell)
Done! I plugged it in and hoped to see my neighbors "linksys" connection show up in the list. THERE WAS ONE CALLED THAT! I got excited! Then I realized that it was my router!
We both left the same default name for the connection! Duh...So I tried moving it all around my window, even up on the roof, but it just couldn't get through the trees to get to the signal. I even tryed rotating it in different ways. Like I thought, no worky
However! All was not in vain! I turned it toward my router, and tryed surfing. EVERYTHING WAS FASTER! I have no idea why, but it was! Signing onto AIM took 3 seconds, instead of the whole minute it used to take!! Laoding the forum page was nearly instant!
So somehow, even though the old antenna said I had a good connection, I really didn't! With the cantenna I'm no longer being randomly disconnected, and things are loading nearly 3-4 times faster!
I wasn't expecting these results at all, but I'm quite happy.Bottom line: If you have wireless, MAKE A CANTENNA!!! They are unbelieveably good, and they take only a few minutes to make. I made mine in about 20 minutes total, from thinking of making it to completion. SO, SO much better than a simple antenna. Wish I had done it long ago.
I did an Ookla speed test, got 25kb download, and 82k upload. Sucks, but I'll take it.
So I think I'm running on, but I need to ask, do you guys have any other ideas to try to get to the neighbors wi-fi? heck, I'd sign up for cable if I could afford it but I'm unable to get a job right now due to health/legal problems (dad never got me a social number, so i'm waiting on one right now to be able to get a job, that and I have a painful limp).
Thanks for checking this out! Hopefully my blatherings are useful to someone.
