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Boost Your Wi-Fi Signal Using Only a Beer Can
First time accepted submitter AmyVernon writes with a small hack that "is supposed to boost signal strength by at least 2 to 4 bars," and which requires little more than a can of beer (or Orangina). She writes: "What you need: scissors, a utility knife, some adhesive putty and an empty beer can. The brand doesn't matter for the router, but I suppose it would be cooler looking if it were Asahi or Stella Artois than if it were Budweiser." Perhaps this will be added one day to my favorite (and very extensive!) list of low-budget Wi-Fi amplifying rigs.
...if you have a satellite dish (which neighborhood doesn't?)
you can just place your WiFi Dongle right in the focus area, or even various other places in front of your dish, and you'll have more hotspots than you EVER dreamed of.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
First time accepted submitter
Who cares?
The attractiveness of the opposite sex greatly increases by two to four beers.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I thought its "thing" was the weirdly shaped bottle.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
1. This is old news. /..
2. Amplified signal power in your direction == amplified noise for your neighbors in other directions.
3. This is probably illegal in many jurisdictions.
4. Nerds don't measure "signal strength" in "bars". Use S/N or leave
5. ???
6. Profit!!
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Since when is WiFi signal strength measured in bars? It's a pressure unit.
Does it work with the iPhone4 ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
I suppose it would be cooler looking if it were Asahi or Stella Artois than if it were Budweiser.
There is nothing special about Stella Artois, in Belgium (where it has its origin) it is the most ordinary beer you can find. The coolness ("premium beer") it has in some other countries is nothing but marketing. When I was a nerd, nerds did not fall for that, but it seems the power of marketing has no limit nowadays.
you could run the freeantennas.com template through your printer, cut out the bits, glue them together, slap a bit of tin foil on the back, and off you go. It really takes less than ten minutes to make one. That's an easy 8..9dB extra gain.
The thing that's critical to beer can and paper-and-tinfoil construction is a reasonable parabolic shape and positioning the antenna at that parabole's focal point. Though a nice square angle will do too, but there again it's the focal point that does it.
In the UK it's nicknamed "Wifebeater". The premium marketing here is nothing more than a desperate ploy by InBev to link it with prestige and class, as opposed to domestic violence.
It's not very nice lager anyway. Mind you I drink Budweiser* so who's kidding who here?
* it's a light, refreshing lager which is ideal for summer evenings, and it's a damn sight better than some of the pisswater we have over here like Carling. That said I'd rather have Innis and Gunn all things considered.
I write bullshit
Haven't we known this since 802.11 came out? Pringles can, anyone?
Yup, it's in the same league as Jupiler, Maes (well, some might argue that one, but I happen to like Maes) and Primus. It's nothing more than "just another pils". Which is fine, if you like pils, but don't act all giddy when you get a Stella. They did have some funny commercials though...
(Disclaimer, I stopped drinking... Ah, a good cold one. The memories.)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
"Beer can"? Asahi, Stella Artois, Budweiser? Maybe you mean "piss can"?
How do you measure signal in bars? Maybe you mean the pressure of that horrible liquid you buy in a can?
Stella Artois is owned by the same company that owns Budweiser. Oh and Beck's too. They are all mediocre beers on par with each other.
My relatives live in the countryside and Internet access speed via a GSM network is abysmal (I'm talking solely about G2/Edge traffic) - around 4-6KB/sec vs theoretical limit of ~14KB/sec. Also access is very intermittent.
Is there a simple working solution (like the one outlined in this article) of boosting GSM connectivity for a 3G modem (which, alas, works only in 2G mode, since 3G masts are too far away).
Proper beer comes in bottles, or barrels, you insensitive clods!
It might work, but I built one of the antennas described below for my brother, and the improvement was noticeable in terms of measured signal strength. http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/
So it would be better with a beer can *and* a couple of pieces of foamcore cut into parabolas...
Boosting a wi-fi signal should be done only when one is having issues due to signal strength. The signal strength should be just enough to get good connection in the radius one intends to use it in (say your apartment/house). If it goes out further than that it is actually a negative thing. The stronger the signal the further it goes out and more vulnerable your wi-fi becomes as it is broadcast over larger area. Also it causes interference with other networks which reduces quality of all the interfering networks involved.
Stella Artois is a french brand, and well, i'm french (sorry 'bout that, at the time, i had no say in the matter :P ). So you can trust me if i tell you that this beer is nowhere near "cool" (and even a good fridge won't do anything about it :) ) ..
You may call it "piss" or any other weird name you can think of, but "cool" does not apply... never... i swear...
Wait... You're calling something pisswater compared to Budweiser?!
Jesus. That crap is pisswater compared to...well... water
Carling is worse than Budweiser by a long shot. It's standard cheap British beer for people who drink to get drunk. It tastes like shit. Budweiser is just an easy-drinking, decent (not great) tasting refreshing beer.
I write bullshit
A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that tech news used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those geeknerds dance
And, maybe, theyâ(TM)d be happy for a while.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Stella Artois is not a bad beer if you get it in Belgium. If you get the brewed under license rubbish outside Belgium then it's just another brand.
I suppose it would be cooler looking if it were Asahi or Stella Artois than if it were Budweiser.
Why the hate for Czech beer? It's not my favourite brand, but given that kind of competition...
I'm pretty sure this was covered years ago via http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/
Also, pretty sure the signal is not amplified, just directed.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
If you think you have tasted the worst the beer world can offer, you clearly havent tasted Emu here in Western Australia.
A little perspective please. In comparison to awful Anheiser-Bush American Piss Water lagers, Stella is a fine lager. In comparison to the fine craft-beer American Ales made by a myriad of quality brewers, Stella is indeed ordinary.
"Premium Beer" might be a marketing term in Europe (I never saw it when I lived in England or Germany) but in the US it is code for "super-extra-piss-water". It is used by Anheiser Bush, Miller, Coors, et. al. to fool Bubbas into thinking they are drinking good beer, when they are just drinking relabeled piss water.
Given the choice of a Stella on draught in America, or any ordinary American beer (on draught or not), Stella is indeed premium.
I thnk you might be confusing teh American Budweiser with the stuff that actually comes from the river Budweis in the Czech Replublic. The American stuff is in the same league with Carling.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser_trademark_dispute
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
My wife and I observed (when we lived in Harrogate) that people who drink to get drunk in England choose cider. We called them "cider kids". They wanted to get drunk but weren't grown up enough to appreciate beer.
someone who has never tried natural light
In the UK
A Brit commenting on beer? Call me when you discover drinking your beer cold.
Joking, I lived a while in the UK and enjoyed more than a few pints of bitter...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Ten cents is ten cents in this economy...
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
They must be. They always did things like this, knocking a tank up out of a water pistol, some corrugated iron and a skateboard.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
This story is about beer cans, so I thought it would be obvious, but I'll spell it out for you: It means that you can see at least 2-4 more Pubs' WiFi hotspots from your flat.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Lol , being a Belgian citizen i suddenly feel great : we certainly have beer much is much ,much better than stella artois ( which to me , is pisswater ).
If you ever come to Belgium, let me know . I'll introduce you to our finest beers.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Although I have no idea what software the author is using, I had no problem following his line of thought ... More bars are better, no?
send + more == money?
I thought the whole point was to go cheap.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The only reason you'd ever drink beer *cold* is if it tastes so disgusting it has to numb your tastebuds before they register what it actually tastes like.
Beer should be drunk at cellar temperature, somewhere between 6 and 8ÂC.
Nope, I am talking about the American Budweiser and not Budvar (which perversely I haven't tried - and probably won't for the foreseeable future, thanks to my diet plan I can't drink beer). Mind you, this is when I want lager - if I drink beer (which I will probably celebrate with when said diet is over) I'd rather drink ale. Aforementioned Innis and Gunn probably.
I write bullshit
We do things differently down here in the tropics.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The brand doesn't matter for the router, but I suppose it would be cooler looking if it were Asahi or Stella Artois than if it were Budweiser
I didn't know Budweiser made routers!
Speaking about radio waves, I always have a hard time visualizing how they fly through the air, what shields them, what reflects them, what is transparent for them, etc. So does anybody know images that demonstrate how the world would look like when seen with radio waves instead of regular light, how a room would look like just illuminated by your WLan router? For IR one can find a few nice pictures such as these, but for radio waves I haven't been able to find anything, aside of course from astronomy pictures, but I am looking more for everyday life.
PS: I know there are issues with resolution that would make a regular "photo" impossible, but putting in some equations into a raytracer might be doable.
What is this, the redneck solution to a poor wi-fi signal?
Mmmm, canned beer. I bet that tastes good. Whether it is entering or exiting your body, I defy anyone to tell me there the difference in taste. Too bad the solution doesn't work with beer bottles.
So I'm already at full, how do I add 2-4 bars to that?
I host a mirror of Stan's site. It has not beep updated in the last couple years, but near all the content is there: http://www.exe64.com/mirror/wokfi/
SeqBox
One for the access point and one for the computer, unless only one of them emits a faint signal. After all even the computer must be loud enough to be heard by the the access point. The problem with internal WiFi adapters is: where do I find a beer can large enough to wrap it around my notebook? And what if the notebook is between me and the access point? I guess that we need to start producing transparent aluminium. :-)
Contents are strange to eat, but the cylindrical foil cans with a dipole epoxied inside are great for long distances.
On Saturday, it's not even nighttime yet, judging from the Scoring 5 on Informative, I'd say the Slashdotters have started drinking WAY too early, sheesh...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Glue some alluminum foil on a piece of heavy paper (construction, card stock, etc) in the same shape. Been doing this since about 2004.
If you think you have tasted the worst the beer world can offer, you clearly havent tasted Emu here in Western Australia.
You guys drink birds? You're doing it wrong.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I only have one question: where does the beer go and can I have it (in a plastic bag, whatever, if you aren't going to?)
MY OTHER COMMENTS
This story reminded me of a video I saw from Fractal Antenna (www.fractenna.com) where they improved the gain and SWR of a monopole antenna using a bit of fractal metamaterial they placed over the monopole antenna. Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWd0nEXFnrE Any analog engineers care to comment on this? Why aren't these antenna designs more popular? Is it the patents?
http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/8655/reflectoryqxw.jpg
Tool needed: Scissors
Please remember that WiFi involves 2-way communications. For the vast majority of applications (TCP-based), there must be 2-way communications for the app to work. How much can amplifying the access-point/base station/wireless router help if signal coming from the wireless client (computer/phone) is not also amplified? And typically, the computer/phone's transmitter/antenna is weaker than the router's, so that's the one that really needs the most help. As with all these WiFi signal strengthening tips, it sounds like a nice idea, but not really thought through carefully.
By the way, none of the comments in the TFA say it actually worked for them.
"Initially marketed as a premium, ever-so-stylish French lager (even if it was actually Belgian) aimed at the upmarket drinker, it rapidly became "a success story beyond anything the beer trade had seen", says Graham Holter, editor of Off Licence News.
The advertising campaign was hugely successful in increasing awareness of the brand. And this was soon coupled with huge price promotions. Despite the "reassuringly expensive" tagline, Stella Artois is very often anything but.
Says one advertising executive who used to work on the brand: "Stella Artois soon became widely available in supermarkets and off licences, where it was - and still is - often discounted."
While the advertising sought to position the brand upmarket, the discounting had the opposite effect and attracted the sort of customer who was good for sales but certainly didn't fit the profile for a high quality product.
And so Stella began to acquire a reputation as a drink for those whose stated mission was to get blind drunk.
"It has become a victim of its own success," says brand expert James Osmond, a director at consultancy Clear. "This often happens when a brand gets so enormous that it tries to appeal to everyone. Either it becomes ubiquitous and begins to lose credibility. Or it's bought by the wrong type of customer."
It was the relatively high 5.2 per cent alcohol content that encouraged the binge-drinkers and led to lager becoming something you'd order "if you were really out on the lash", as one drinker, estate agent Martin Abel, puts it."
Quote from the Daily Mail [this link left intentionally blank]
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I don'tk know if things have equaled out, but american Bud is different from the Bud sold in other countries. Canadian Bud was actually drinkable and refreshing in hot montreal summers. The low alcohol bud I drank in Florida tasted worse than piss. It's been about 20 years so....
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Maybe you should try something that isn't a lager and then all the lagers will taste like piss water. And don't drink the ale ice cold that is just a waste, but then again it is all about preference.
no, Emu is a brand of pisswater (jokingly labeled "beer" by its manufacturer)
I used a beer can for months to get TV signal in an old TV set and it worked like a glove...
What utter useless crap. This is just a reboot of the Pringle's can antenna, which may have some use for war-driving but is not so great for actual communication. When you use such an antenna to narrow your signal's transmission pattern and to focus received transmissions, you need to have some sort of accuracy to match its precision, and that accuracy and precision have to be repeatable, and survive the environment they are installed it. This is not the days of old, where good antennas cost a few hundred dollars each. If you insist on extended range on the cheap, go get an old satellite dish and adapt it, or get an MMDS grid. Or build the old Guerrilla.Net colinear vertical antenna, if you're got a liking for intricate soldering.
Enjoy the beer, return the can, put that 5 cents towards a real antenna.
But when I do, I use Dos Equis.
Here in the UK we have automobile obsessive Jeremy Clarkson. He showed on his TV show many years ago that a remote car alarm activator couldn't switch on or off a car alarm from a large distance (10s of metres away). But then he put the device to his head, and pointed it at the car, so he was beaming at the car through his skull. He was able to activate and deactivate the car alarm.
Signal strength should be (or rather: is) measured in microvolt per meter.
No weird-ass nonsense needed.
The article says to cut the can on the red line, but I don't see a red line on my can.
Ow! I just cut myself.
If you want a low-end session beer, I recommend Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Not much bittering hops, a fair amount of flavoring hops, and the price is right.
If your wireless router only has an internal antenna, as mine does, then this is not possible to utilize without opening the router case up.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Bud isn't even consistent in the USA.
St. Louis bud is watery but drinkable (barely, if their is nothing else but Carona or Coors), just like Michelob (all from St. Louis). N. Cal east bay bud is unbelievably vile. I'd rather die of thirst. When beer is that watery, the water has to be good.
3.2% beer is awful, no matter the brand. Likely what you got in Fl.
The Canadians have traditionally upped the alcohol content 1% on beer they contract brew. It's a matter of 51st stater pride and anti-freeze. They are the ones responsible for the vile piss sold as Kingfisher in the USA. Their version of Fosters is also piss, but that is in keeping with the original.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Mark Erickson (computer genius) was providing solutions for this problem years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY8Wi7XRXCA
Dale's Pale Ale comes in a can... or the the Gubna. Good domestic microbrew from Colorado.
Also, Where is anyone gonna get Stella in a can? Not in the U.S. so far as I've ever seen. Not to mention, Stella and Budweiser are owned by the same giant company now, Anheuser-Busch InBev, so the cool factor on either is zero.
lol keep digging :D
in relation to beer.. What is this "can" thing you speak of ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
This can be done with a simple wok lid too: http://www.google.com/search?q=woktenna
Does length matter? My wife and I are on Schlitz kick and we have a few empty tall boys that would be perfect for this.
Hello...?!? Early 21st century called and wants its' DIY project back.
Cantennas have been around for over a decade.
In fact a really simple search... of /. , shows it was first mentioned
(Pringles) on August 27th, 2001:
http://slashdot.org/story/01/08/27/172225/Wireless-Freenets-As-The-Parasitic-Grid
I'm glad we are getting more "frist tme pissers" but it would be nice
if we get some fresh articles with it.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
There's a lot of cheap supermarket home brand beers here that I'd never touch with a 10-foot pole. Euroshopper beer, for example, I've only ever seen being bought by homeless people. (Amazing that's a viable market!)
(Yes, I deserve to be modded into oblivion for this. Go ahead.)
I mean, everyone knows, "Stella Artois" is French for "Budweiser."
Is that anything like a Pinkangina? If so, how hard is it to stick a beer can in there? I'm sure by the time that point is reached you will have PLENTY of empty beer cans lying around.
What is it with Czech towns and beer? Most Dutch light beers are called "pils", short for "pilsener beer", named after the Czech town of Pilsn.
Beer should be drunk at cellar temperature, somewhere between 6 and 8ÂC.
That's pretty normal fridge temperature, actually. How cold do you think cold is?
This is old news, they take something else and use it to make your wireless become directional, it had nothing to do with making the signal "better" in any way shape or form. you might as well use tinfoil on the tip of the antenna to make it go further. It all boils down to this, people want better reception in their house they need to two a few things. first and foremost they need to central position their wireless radio, 70% of all house hold i talk to who have issues is because the device is on 1 side of the house, and they expect it to go down two floors to the basement on the other side of the house and work. 2ndly people need to stop buying cheap routers, I can't tell you the number of times I've replaced a router with one that's got better output Db and it's fixed the issue.
But I guess people who like the whole DIY will have a ball with it for a while.
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
Do we have to go to kindergarten type rewards here? A submitter is a submitter. Either that or start adding "51-time accepted submitter xxxx..." to every post- why not be fair.
sooooooooo old that can't believe that /. bothered.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I keep my fridge about 2ÂC, in accordance with Food Standards Agency guidelines. Hey, if it works for food safety at work, it works for food safety at home ;-)
Beer snobbery is for the young. Wait till your metabolism slows down and you start looking at beer on a caloric intake/alcohol efficiency scale.
Not that Stella or Asahi are anything to write home about anyway.
Everytime I see stories about WiFI and boosting signals all I can think of is the move Johnny Mnemonic and NAS (nerve attenuation syndrome). I wonder what the long term affects are in our future because of all this additional 'pressures' in the air.
I checked out four of my local microbreweries just to check, and they only sell bottles or kegs. Admittedly, using a keg for this would be awesome.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Cheap beer has its place, but many people are too snobby to drink it. I like Olympia (in cans) when I'm looking for a cheap, cold refreshing beer, for example, after doing something really physical and sweaty in the summer. If it's 80 degrees outside, nothing is quite so nice as a crisp light ice cold cheap bear. The last thing I'd want in that scenario is a porter I have to practically drink with a spoon. In contrast, that aforementioned porter on a cold winter night can be perfect.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
A can of beer is one thing, a decent can of beer is another! These days there are many breweries putting out cans of beer with a special lining inside to protect the deliciousness from the aluminum. Is there anyone out there who can testify to the effect such a lining might have on the do-it-yourself project in question?
Or at least speculate?
Worst case I suppose I'll have to get a sixer of High Life and a sixer of Brew Free or Die. You know, for science.
"extreme" and "crank-it-to-11" remind me of the "OMG hops hops hops!" beers I often see on the shelf.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Sure, their money is as good as anybody else's, but if people not in the targeted niche buy the product, does it hurt sales in the targeted niche too much?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Thank you for saying what I was trying to get at but was too fucking hamfisted to actually get across. :P
I write bullshit
...started drinking WAY too early...
Define: too early
Is that when the bar closes?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I have 3 antennas on my router, does that mean I need to drink 3 beers ? :)
From TFA: "The first step is to wash out your empty beer can, unless of course said beer is a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. If it is PBR, promptly go drink a better beer. You really should be ashamed of yourself.
Lost me with his sneer. A lot of people like PBR because it's inexpensive and good.
But then, a can of the _original_ Budweiser (i.e., the one from the Czech Republic) would certainly achieve the coolness goal as well.
Including the taste goal. Many of the beers from Belgium or Ireland would do.
Just make sure to avoid those U.S. beverages that pretend to be "beer". Don't drink them, don't use their cans for your projects. ;-)
If I put this thing in my living room, my wife would go crazy!
Boost your wi-fi signal, interfere with the neighbours' hi-fi and overload your router's output stage. Good idea...
So this won't work with the antenna that is broken and lying on its side. :(