This is a "mushroom cantenna", made with very simple household materials. The basic construction is a plastic or foam mushroom antenna, tin foil (dull side out), some bread bag ties, and some creativity. My wireless card, a TP-Link TL-WN321G ($9 from Amazon), works well in my cantenna. It has a loop on the top so I can pull the card "tight" in the cantenna so it doesn't flop around and is not solely relying on the USB cable to keep it upright.
I poked a hole in the plastic container, ran a breadbag tie through the top, and pulled it tight. I just lined the container with foil, with no hot glue or tape, and let the wireless card hold it straight.
This is a side view of my creation. As you can see at the very top, I poked a hole through the rear of the top of the container to run a bread bag tie, so it can hook onto the curtain hook in my window. Midway through the container, I poked two sets of holes so I can run ties through them and secure them to a pole or whatever I need to secure them to to get a signal boost. I have a tripod from a fold up music stand, which I'm going to convert into a wireless tripod to hold up my cantenna so the signal is not being blocked on my porch.
I can test the signal with various utilities and see if I'm getting the actual performance boost I want, or if the signal isn't working. I will post screen shots of my research on this blog for others to see what types of cantennas work, and what cantennas don't work.
Creativity is everything :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment