Wi Fi Amplifier

Although we have free WiFi at our marina their system isn't the most powerful or the fastest so getting on line using just our laptop internal  antenna was often a bit of a crap shoot. We couldn't do much about the speed of the connection but we had been looking for a way to improve the signal strength. There are plenty of inexpensive off-the-shelf amplifiers out there but most of them are for indoor applications. We wanted something with a bit more power that we could mount externally, but all-weather amps tend to be expensive.

While we were looking for a solution we came across an excellent blog that showed, among many other useful projects, a DIY WiFi amplifier that looked like it would be ideal for us. We decided to build a replica.

http://trawler-beach-house.blogspot.com

We had to make a couple of design changes to suit the latest generation of antenna supplied by EnGenius but otherwise we basically followed the design as published.

The latest EnGenius omni-directional antenna has a different base design to the one specified. We had to make a clamping ring to hold it in the PVC pipe cap. 

All the parts ready for assembly. Strangely, the most difficult item to source was the short piece of 4" schedule 40 PVC pipe. We went all over our area to try and buy an off-cut but nobody had any scrap pieces, only 20 ft lengths! Eventually a local plumber took pity on us and cut us a short length. 

The finished unit. When we get our stern arch built it will be mounted much higher up, along with the GPS and back-up VHF antennas, but even down here on the stern rail the performance is amazing. Using the internal laptop antenna we could see about a half dozen local hot spots, all inside the marina or close by. Of those, only four were better than 'fair' signal strength.

With the amplifier hooked up we were able to see over a dozen hot spots, with a couple showing 'excellent' signal strength and most of the rest being 'good'. At least one of those we know is more than  a mile away!