Extending Range - Antenna Only

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Extending Range - Antenna Only

Well, the easiest way to exted the Cybiko's range is an antenna. A 902 - 928 Mhz compatable antenna is required. These range from $30 - $500.

There are 2 ways you can go by about this. If you know exactly where your cybiko is going to be within 10 degrees left or right you could use a directional antenna (ie. Yagi antenna) which offers higher gain (The antenna power) and are cheaper. Most people want to be mobile. If your like me get a omni-direftional antenna. This offers a 360 degree radius. The downsides are that they are more expensive and offer less gain.

My Home Brew 4 dbi Omni - Directional Antenna

This was made by scalling these 2.4 Ghz plans up by 267 percent.

Formula : 2.4/.9 = 2.67 = 267%

An Easy Home Brew Antenna

Note: Keep the diameter of the PVC the same, do no scale the pvc diameter !

After test 1, I found un-appealing results. I found that i was loosing alot of signal strength over my cable length to the antenna. I shortened this and loaded this program into the cybiko that increases the output power of the RF transciever (Drains batteries quicker so only use on base station). After $10 and a few hours I had increased my range over 200%!! I also added one of those stick on cell phone antenna boosters on the mobile unit (did help a little, i picked up 4 of them for $2 including S&H on ebay , not a bad deal). So my results conclude around a 3-4db gain=)

The Cybiko Extened Wireless Access Point