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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.
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.
Do you really expect a list?
rewriting history since 2109
I thought its "thing" was the weirdly shaped bottle.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's so we know who to start hating, should the need arise.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
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)
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.
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
Actually it is, all the more so when compared to the alternatives available there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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()?
Actually it is, all the more so when compared to the alternatives available there.
As a Belgian citizen, i second that.
Though it's a matter of taste i guess : i'm sure some beer which is loved here, won't find a market in the US.
Slipping shoelaces ?
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 ?
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.
I guess you're not familiar with the heavily-booming US microbrewery industry.
Once we were legally allowed to brew at home again, people started it, and some people discovered that they made some killer beer, so they went into business. There's been a trend towards more "extreme" sorts of beer, but that's subsiding -- but was and is a pretty good agent for change and the creation of new and delicious beer. The US is a little less... mired in tradition, let's say.. than European brewers. That basically means we're free to pretty much copy any kind of European beer, or create new weird and good beers.
I (am about to sound like a hipster, but) always order a microbrew when I'm out somewhere, if one is available. It almost doesn't even matter who makes it or what sort of beer it is, they're all pretty good and some are outstanding. Though that's riskier on the west coast, they've got more microbreweries over there that have run with the whole crank-it-to-11 idea.. east coast microbrews i've found to typically be more interested in just making damn good beer without the gimmicks (but since there's fewer of them, there isn't the competition to stand out from as on the west coast. and also less hipsters..)
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
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.
I suppose the awfulness of American Budweiser is lost on you, otherwise you would have modded my post +1 funny.
I suppose the fact that "Czechvar" and "Budéjovicky Budvar" on the can everywhere else in the world is lost on you? Budweiser appears on the cans in the EU only. But yeah, as a beer fan, and somebody who has been to the brewery, I'm fully aware that Budvar is the original "Budweiser".
Then again, as a fan of beer, I generally don't drink it out of a can (few exceptions being some craft brewers in America starting to ship in cans).
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
Having recently gone on an Anheuser-Busch tour, here's the scoop: Anheuser-Busch manufactures and distributes Budweiser. Stella is distributed by InBev. InBev recently bought Anheuser-Busch and operates Anheuser-Busch as a subsidiary. But, true, no matter how you dice it, they're both similar beers on par with each other. I happen to like simple beers, though.
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!
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
"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.
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?
Depends what you are measuring. Signal to Noise ratio can be more important than signal strength. It would also be helpful to see how this affects reception on the WAP end.
no, Emu is a brand of pisswater (jokingly labeled "beer" by its manufacturer)
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.
If you had stopped after your third sentence you would have been ok. Noob questions are allowed and may be answered politely. But when you add the typical slashdot condescending remark "a nice idea but not really thought through carefully" while asking a question that demonstrates your lack of even basic knowledge of antennas you just invite my sort of reply.
(Smug) Herp. Derp. I guess we can't all be electrical engineers (/smug).
It is indeed a 2 way street. Any change to an antenna that increases its transmit gain also increases its receive gain. The reflector sends more of the transmitted signal towards your client (if it is in front of the reflector) and also gathers more of the client signal and focuses it on the antenna, thereby equally increasing the received signal.
The microbrewery industry began in the UK, and several European countries are big into brewpubs. Regular CAMRA events and local off-license shelves demonstrate no limit to innovation in the field, that is the tradition.
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.
The microbrewery industry began in Egypt (if current archeology is correct).
It never died, so going rah-rah for particular nations is stupid.
I prefer going rah-rah for particular brews. Obsidian oatmeal stout! Rah rah.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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'
It only really began in the US after we were once again allowed to brew beer at home ;) We had that whole Prohibition thing for a spell -- which is why American beer is considered shit beer, incidentally -- and I think it was 1976? that common citizens without license were allowed to make beer at home... yeah, fucking weird, huh? I'm off on that year I'm certain.. but it was relatively recently.
Prohibition.. ugh. It set our liquor industry back decades, and beer.. yanno. Back in the day, American beer was just European beer on new soil. Especially somewhere, like, oh, say, where I live, which was populated primarily by Germans (mostly from southern Germany and Bavaria) and a smattering of English (and Irish and Scots). Beer was huge. And then... it stopped. None really made it through Prohibition. Before, nearly every bar or tavern would've been brewing their own brand out in the back -- after? Nothing. Just awful. :(
I said the US is a little less mired in tradition than Europe, and I meant it.. but not wholly in the way it sounds. We in the US are surrounded by shitty beer. Over in Europe, that's not really true. Over here, there's a bigger market for new types of beer, simply because anyone who wants good beer HAS TO go to a microbrew -- our mass market brew is piss (albeit a very consistent and well-maintained piss...). We're less mired in tradition in that we're less apt to go out and drink the same beer that's been made for decades or centuries, because it just either doesn't exist or isn't very good. Our only option for good beer is new beer.
But at least we have that option these days!
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
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'
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
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
The thing is, weak export versions of boring European beers seem to be considered strong, special and/or hip in the US. Same thing with Heineken.
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."
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.
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.
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
I used a beer can for months to get TV signal in an old TV set and it worked like a glove...
What is the db increase of a glove?
-@|
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
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!
Thanks for the info, i'll have to try that.
There are plenty of Belgian beers which are only brewed locally , and they are usually very good ( they are driven by their passion for beer , not by making a huge profit )
So i'm sure it will be good , but tastes may vary ( if it tastes sweet , for example , i won't like it ) .
Slipping shoelaces ?