Cooling your Access Point?

CmdrChillupa asks: "Summer's here in the US. I don't really mind the heat and I've lived my whole life without AC. Just gotten used to having fresh air instead of pre-processed. There's only one problem with this whole theory. After a long day at work I get home and go to do a little surfing on my PowerBook and my WLAN is down. I have a Siemens Speedstream 2624 Wireless Router that from all appearances dislikes the heat more than I do. I've gotten into a habit of holding it in front of a fan for a few minutes everyday when I get home, I thought the fridge might be a bit too humid for it's electronics. Anybody have any solutions aside from a alum-alloy-peltier-inter-cooled-turbo-charged-9 monstrosity?"

Comments

Same as SMC

[ralphb]

I believe that the Siemens Speedstream is hardware equivalent of the SMC AWBR wireless router I have. Siemans runs their own version of firmware on it, and it's supposedly a lot more stable than SMC's firmware. The SMC firmware is so bad, in fact, that I gave up on the SMC as a router because it kept disconnecting my cable modem connection every few hours and required a reboot to reconnect. Not a Hardware problem, they swapped it out for me once. I got myself a Linksys (which runs perfectly) and I'm using the SMC as just a wireless access point. I just disable DHCP and assign it a static IP. Anyway...

The unit is very heat sensitive. When I first installed it, I had trouble getting a stable connection about 30 feet away through one floor and one wall. So, I set the unit up on styrofoam feet about one inch high and set up a 4" cooling fan to blow across the unit. Big difference! The signal in my kitchen is now five by five. I don't think you need to do any extreme cooling tricks to get the improvement.

Ralph

Re:Same as SMC

[drlock]

As the parent post suggests, circulation may be the biggest requirement.

You don't necessarily need cold air from A/C, you just need to keep the air moving.

As an extreme example, I saw a monitor overheat and destroy itself once because someone left a few magazines on top of it and covered the vents. It was not a particularly warm day, there was just no circulation.

Re:Same as SMC

[Laplace]

I agree. happend to my brother.

You left some magazines on your brother and he overheated?

Move to Alaska

[PeteyG]

Move to Alaska, like I did. I live down the street from a glacier, and I let my superpowered gaming laptop heat my room at night.

If you need reliable cooling...

[mnmn]

I read someone had done this for his desktop pc..

Take a long flat piece of aluminium bar. Bolt one end into the inside of the AP possibly on top of the hottest chips (will need to drill a hole or slot in the side) and the other end of the bar is bolted on a water pipeline or metal structure of the building that runs through the concrete. This makes your router VERY immobile.

I'm betting youll find an easier way like placing the router in a cooler place, but I just needed to throw in this possibility.

Get airconditioning

[Anonymous Coward]

You damn dirty hippy.

an (obvious) measure

[Anonymous Coward]

Put the box in spot that gets no sunlight on the floor. this is in contrast to placing it near the ceiling where heat can gather.

consider a small fan to blow air over the box to get some ventilation.

also consider placing the box in your basement. for example: I live in a 3 story 100+ year old row home, no a/c. The floors lower to the ground are consistently cooler then upper floors. so keep this ap on a lower floor, maybe even the basement.

It's easy, you answered it yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

LEAVE THE FAN THERE instead of taking it away. Simple.

Don't buy shit?

[anthony_dipierro]

Anybody have any solutions aside from a alum-alloy-peltier-inter-cooled-turbo-charged-9 monstrosity?

Buy a linksys. They have an operating temperature of -10C to 55C (14F to 131F).

Re:Don't buy shit?

[anthony_dipierro]

Unfortunately, linksys boxes do get hotter than 131F.

Is that what they're talking about? I figured they meant 131F room temperature...

Anyway, I run my Linksys 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in my unairconditioned apartment (I have AC in the bedroom, but the Linksys is in the kitchen). It was 95 degrees yesterday. No problems whatsoever.

Perhaps Linksys isn't the best choice, but I'm sure an access point can be found which can handle the summer heat.

Vertical PCB

[redelm]

Mount the unit so the circuit board is vertical. This will greatly improve cooling by natural convection.

Make sure there is enough vent area at the bottom and top of the case as mounted. Drill some if needed.

Re:Vertical PCB

[adolf]

I'll second that.

I used to use a nice SMC-branded rackmount 10/100 "switching hub." Fan-cooled, 12 ports, looked and felt solid. Recently, it met its fate: it's internal power supply caught fire (!).

So, I needed a replacement. And I'm broke. So I found a cheap (less than $30) 8-port 10/100 switch, branded Hawking Technology and made by who-knows-who. It works as well as any other cheap switch, which is to say: just fine for me here at home.

It ran quite hot while sitting horizontally on a shelf. My newly-discovered fear for warm networking gear told me to fix that.

So, I hung it vertically from the side of the same shelf, using the wall-mount holes on the back and some cable ties. The 8 RJ45 jacks on the bottom allow plenty of air to go past/through them, which escapes out of the small vent near the top of the unit.

It's not quite cool to the touch, but the surface of it is now within "just-barely-warm" range. Which I consider quite good enough.

Passive convection cooling and is underappreciated in the electronics design world by apparently everyone but audio companies and Apple Computer. It wouldn't be hard, at all, to make this thing cool itself acceptably in the horizontal position, but nobody took the time.

refrigerator humidity

[menscher]

Any reason you think the fridge will be humid? Everyone knows that air-conditioning removes humidity... and a fridge is just a big air conditioner. The hard part will be getting wires into the fridge for power/networking. Also, I'm not sure the wireless will work so well from within a fridge (think of shielding effects).

In the fridge

[Tintivilus]

I thought the fridge might be a bit too humid for it's electronics.

If it's too humid in the fridge, it's waaay too humid in the heat. Cold air doesn't hold as much moisture as warm air; this is why a lot of people store ground coffee in the fridge or freezer. You can put it in the fridge without any problems, you just need to watch out for condensation when you take it out of its cool, dry place into the warm, moist ambient air.

On the other hand, your RF performance might suffer by putting your AP in a big metal box :)

Forced Air Ventillation

[pbox]

1. take the drill to the top of the case. Make a 60 or 80 mm diameter hole.

2. Get a cheap 60 or 80 mm computer fan ($3 investment).

3. Mount with 2 or 4 screws to the top of the case.

4/a (some geekness, but mobile) Take your multimeter (everyone should have one lying around) and find a 5-12 V power to supply the fan. This should be not that hard for any geek. Look around the power supply. Solder fan wires.

4/b (less elegant, but no need to know EE) Take an old PC power supply, hardwire the ATX power signal. Connect fan.

5. Profit. I mean surf.

dremell tool and fans

[BenTheDewpendent]

cut a small hole in the enclousure (near or over the hot spot, if it can even be found), big enough for a small ish (think 5-9volt) fan and solder the power leds to the power connection in the AP then attach fan. or dont use a fan and just make some holes to help with the ventelation.

Thanks if you cant move it to a cooler area.

Nope

[bitty]

A typical refrigerator has high humidity. If they kept humidity down, your food would dry out.

Re:Nope

[b!arg]

I prefer to call it the vegetable rotter as I only tend to look in that damned compartment about once a month.

remove the cover

[BigBir3d]

assuming it is in a relatively dust free environment.

or you could do the dremel thing... but i would use a smaller fan (maybe chipset fan instead of a case fan).

A few options...

[stienman]

You might find it'll work better via convection air flow if you tilt it so the back is up and the front is down.

• Mount it or set it on small blocks so air can flow freely around the entire unit.
• Mount it to the wall.
• Use a vacuum and clean any dust and debris out.
• Remove some of the plastic casing over the warmest chip, and mount a tiny fan (such as those sold at radio shack) onto the case, blowing onto the chip
• Hang it from a string from the cieling or bookshelf
• Place it on a large aluminum (aluminium, for you other blokes) plate, or block of steel
• Attach it to the blade of your ceiling fan
• Go to Radio Shack and get a few aluminum heatsinks and use thermal adhesive to glue them to the tops of the chips (or pcmcia card) that are getting hot
• RTFM
• Put it in your neighbor's airconditioned house/apt/condo/cardboard box
• Learn not to buy cheap
• Use it in an interactive, wireless art exhibit - "Schrodinger's Net connection: You don't know if it's dead or alive until you open the laptop..."

-Adam

You could always cool it with a jet engine....

[NTT]

like this "bloke"
http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer

Try the Netgear ME-102

[raju1kabir]

Not sure whether this will make you feel any better, but I have a Netgear ME-102 access point and it's never had any heat problems.

I live in Washington DC where the summers get pretty summery. I keep it hanging in an unobscured east-facing window where it gets several hours of direct sunlight per day. It's between the window and the blinds so it also gets the heat reflected back by the blinds. I don't use the A/C in my apartment (prefer the fan), so it's usually about 80 in the shade indoors. The thing's gone through one full summer and what we've had of this one, without a hiccup.

Re:Is this REALLY an issue?

[raju1kabir]

I have a dlink ap-1000 that doesnt even get to room temperature.

That's pretty impressive. Better turn it off once in a while or you'll cool the earth to absolute zero.