50mb 1.2km wifi link under 100$

[Stomper]

I made a 2.4ghz link from my home to my fishing cabin this summer and it worked so well and beyond my expectation that i decided to share the setup with other people who would like a wifi link for the lowest cost possible for a reliable system.

First i must say i live very far away from any city center, i dont have any interference at all on my land since our Wisp use 900mhz so the 2.4ghz band is empty, if you live in a crowded place with people using 2.4ghz everywhere then 5ghz would be a better choice for you and dont expect the range i got with interference.


I used this tool to calculate the tower hight needed, yes at 1.2km you need towers.
ubiquiti air link (http://airlink.ubnt.com/)

After the calculation Airgrid tell me 30ft is enough, but in real life Airgrid dont know the heigh of trees so it didnt work, since the tallest tree is 20ft between the 2 dots at 50ft it works, so the antenna at the camp was installed at 50ft and on my house 30ft was enough since the house is already higher in elevation than the cabin.

This is my setup;

Modem --rj45 20'--> router house --rj45 80'--> Router wifi 300mb with yagi antenna --wifi 1.2km--> router receiver Lb-Link 150mb with homemade grid dish--rj45 95'--> Router cabin Lb-Link 150mb

I got a signal of 67% and a connection quality of 100%, 34ms ping to internet and 4ms ping to the first router.

The router at the cabin is powered by a 6.4v 80ah LiFePo4 battery and i charge it at home in 8hr, it last more than a month.

Picture;

Routeur 300mb (Principal router)

Router Lb-Link BL-MP02 (Receiver)

Yagi antenna on my house, it's the smallest, the other antenna is for Ota HDTV.

Fishing cabin with the tower made 100% of live white spruce.

Rj45 and rectified DC 5V going up the tower.

At 50 in the tree looking at the house.

Calculation with UBNT AiRLink

Receiver in the tree with my homemade dish.

Speedtest on a 3Mb Wisp connection.
(Speedtest.net by Ookla - My Results)

It was not easy, i tried many times many setup to finally find a way to do it but always with the same cheap hardware, i'm not very confortable going up a tower either so for me it was almost a challenge, if you do something like this please buy a harness it doesnt cost much and it's worth less than your life.

Some people said to me it wont work with wind because the tree will move from side to side but even in huge storm it still work, the ping can go up to 10ms to the first router but i find 10ms in a storm with 100km/h wind still very good, it even work when there's thunderstorm and rain so the only thing for me left to test is winter, will it hold -40C and snow.

I made many test with the LB-Link pocket router and even at 200mw of tx power it can go as far as 1.2km with a descent 50mb connection, i could have used one for the house but i need 2 antenna to broadcast the signal around the house outside. But if you live at less than 1km of a friend then sharing a connection is easy and at 12$ each, it doesnt cost much to create a small network, the parabolic grid is not necessary but will help.
The only drawback is you have to build your own antenna for it like a usb stick because there's no connector on it.

 

[damir]

Now i know where i will be going for fishing.

Good job, and thanks for sharing all info.

 

[azazel1024]

Thanks for sharing the info and your setup.

At least on the cabin end, have you considered doing something like setting up a solar panel and a solar battery charger? You'd possibly have to swap out the battery and maybe router for something that will run on 12v (I think there are 6v solar chargers though, but I don't know that they'll work with Li batteries of anytype).

Since it sounds like the power requirements are pretty low, I'd think something like a 15-30w panel would be more than enough. I've looked at setups a few times for low end remote power and it looks like only $150 or so for panel, battery and charge controller including panel mount and wiring.

Or you could oversize it a bit more for extra power at the cabin for things like LED lighting, fan in case you need a bit of a breeze, etc.

 

[Stomper]

azazel1024 yes but actually i'm waiting to get enough $$ to use solar for the whole camp, around 5000w of solar panel.

In the camp i already have 8 battery 12v 120ah wired as 4S2P 48v 240ah.
For heating i use a wood stove and i heat a water tank with it for hot water.
But i'm fed up of the generator and i want something silent.

The lithium pack is small enough to carry in a backpack and i use it for the router only, the tree is on the other side of the river so i can't run a wire from the camp to the tree it's about 150ft too much loss that far on DC.
I could use a solar panel to charge it but i would need to heat the pack also in winter if it stay 24hr outdoor, a simple isolated bag wont be enough at -30 or -40C, im close to the Artic circle up here
I use the camp in winter too, 2000ft from the camp there is a lake on my land, i'm ice fishing and dogsledding.

 

[azazel1024]

Ahhhh. Yeah, up towards the arctic circle would change things a lot. Though, one thought. I realize it would require a very water proof box, but you could bury the battery underground below the frost line (yes, I know that far north the frost line is DEEP), so you wouldn't need to heat the battery. Downside is long nights might not be sufficient to supply electricty even with an over sized panel.

Conundrum.

One thought, if you are right by a river, what about microhydro? Or does the ice layer go too deep to put some microhydro near the river floor?

I deffinitely hear you on being sick of a generator. I only have a backup for my house and my GODS does it get annoying after a few hours of droning along. That and I assume fuel costs for you are pretty steep.

Personally, I don't mind chopping wood though (even if it is the only way for hot water/heat), so I'd keep the current heating/hot water method and just do enough solar to run the basics like lighting, charging any gadgets, etc. which you might be able to get away with only a few hundred watts of panels and the big bank.

Wind an option at the location as a supplement/primary power source?

 

[stevech]

when you say 50Mb... do you mean 50 megabits/sec as the 802.11 connection speed? Or the net IP layer speed?

And does 50Mb really mean megabits? To eliminate the ambiguity with megabits and megabytes, the convention to use is:

b = bits
B = bytes (8 bits)

 

[Stomper]

Yes 50Mbps, or 4mb less than a 802.11G connection speed at 1.2km with a 12$ router and an old fan as a dish to the router on top of my house, and a 4ms ping can go up to 10ms sometimes with heavy wind.
The picture you see from the speedtest only show the speed of my Wisp connection, 3mbps on 900mhz, the wisp tower is 30km away.

look incredible but it works, keep in mind there's nothing working on 2.4ghz around here and the antenna have a perfect line of sight at 30 and 50ft.

I can watch Youtube and play Battlefield in the woods that's awesome!

azazel1024 i solved the problem of power today, by using 48v 1amp directly from the camp with a 14g wire i get 47.5v on the other side, almost no voltage drop compared to 5v at 1amp, then i use a 48v to 5v transformer and sending 5VDC via passive POE for the 30ft left up the tree, with the transformer at 20ft.

picture of the dog for dog lovers

 

[azazel1024]

Very nice! Yeah, low voltage in a PITA when it comes to transmitting it over any real distance. Well, at least if you are talking any "real" power at the end. Very low power is just fine with low voltage over long distance.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around living with 3Mbps pipe to the internet. That said, I am impressed at 3Mbps from a connection of 30km, even with 900MHz.