Comments on: Aspire One external antenna

By: 210 Backlinks

210 Backlinks — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:03:55 +0000

Great thanks!

By: xrazorwirex

xrazorwirex — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:42:14 +0000

I just bought a batch of 4 from inside the states priced at $9 for a set of 2 w/ free shipping, so about $4.50 a pop – but they are long:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110370940543

By: MrDoom

MrDoom — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:29:58 +0000

Anyone know a good supplier of SMA pigtails? They seem to run in the $15 range from what I was seeing.

By: xrazorwirex

xrazorwirex — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:38:33 +0000

Yeah, I read about that on the link provided to the EEE mod. The guy had a serious issue with stability.

I’d mount the antenna superficially – drill a hole through the back of the monitor bezel and mount it on the back – maybe fabricate a hinge so I can ‘aim’ it a bit. I’m not sure if maybe the problem was the way he cut things down and such or if it really was just the shielding / antenna position; because those tiny gps boxes in cars work pretty well with their internal antenna….

I’m also really bummed that there’s only one PCI slot on the D150; I want to add that broadcom HD accelerator to my netbook but I don’t want to sac the wifi card – maybe stack a 2nd pci slot and find a way to switch between the 2 on the fly.. without blowing things up…

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:37:52 +0000

Internal GPS would be cool. The only thing with a GPS mod is the whole antenna view of the sky deal.

By: xrazorwirex

xrazorwirex — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:09:02 +0000

pretty much the whole right side of the d150 is up for grabs – there’s plenty of storage space inside and wall space for mounting things.

I’m surprised the d150 isn’t getting as much attention from hackers as its little sibling ‘A series’ does.

I’d like to see what other people have done / any good ideas for further hacks on specifically the d150. I’m strongly considering a GPS module mod.

By: clint

clint — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:08:39 +0000

damn I should have put my mod up here months ago, would have made it on hackaday. I put my’n lower in the case to the front so I did not have to kill the lock area, used the same sma though

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:36:12 +0000

Speaking of cantennas I made one awhile back but found it to not be so useful since it had to be connected to my laptop with the above posted connector. I found a way to make my canntena much more useful by directly soldering the cantenna to a dd-wrt modded fonera router. Now I have a “wireless” cantenna. I can connect to my cantenna with my laptop’s internal wifi. The cantenna essentially works as a repeater. So instead of connecting the cantenna with wire I can access it from 300ft away. The dd-wrt firmware also allows you to crank up the wattage if necessary.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:14:38 +0000

Cantennas have plenty of uses, but… I’d think a plain old dipole would be better for heatmapping considering that the canntena is directional and the GPS receiver is not.

By: xrazorwirex

xrazorwirex — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:27:52 +0000

I’m also going to combat the awkwardness of the antenna jutting out the side with a small right angle adapter. I planned this in advance when I ordered everything but I got a standard SMA right angle instead of an rp-sma so I have to wait for the right one to ship from china (which for whatever reason takes considerably longer to ship from than hong kong).

I mocked it up and it works very well – the right angle sticks out just a bit less than the power cable does, and the antenna can fold neatly behind the monitor over the battery when not in use.

By: xrazorwirex

xrazorwirex — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:23:33 +0000

I should probably clarify that I got serious performance from going to .11N 2.0 – I just wasn’t too scientific about my approach and so I upgraded from G to N (and I had a compatible N router which I blogged about in the series ‘Hacks – XSpan Mod’) and upgraded the antenna at the same time, so I don’t know how much of my performance increase is attributed to the antenna and how much is attributed to my card (Atheros AR5008). I may roll back to my G card and do some performance benchmarks in Omni-Peek for the sake of information collection. I also don’t know if only upgrading one antenna makes much of a difference, as it still uses 2 (if G then 1) of the original antenna. If anyone knows more about this I am all ears. I would like to find out if maybe one antenna is dedicated to discovery or something like that and use that as my external antenna.

I took it out with a D-Link ANT24-0700 which has a magnetic remote base, and driving around town I snuff out some serious packet-age running Omni-Peek and had I see far more networks than I ever did before.

Maybe tonight I’ll use Ekahau and heatmap my town.. sounds fun.

By: jake

jake — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:12:10 +0000

I think the article meant he cant attest to a change in speed or range. But the increased connectors, like more variable antennas that COULD provide that change… ;)

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:37:06 +0000

“…but he says he can’t attest to any change.”

“…but a small price to pay for a big increase in connectivity.”

So which is it? No change or a big change? :p

By: strider_mt2k

strider_mt2k — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:25:36 +0000

funny i remember SMA stuff as seeming so small originally! lol

Very nice work.

By: Glen

Glen — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:58:35 +0000

I put one in my Aspire one ages ago. But i didn’t want a R-SMA sticking out the side of the case snagging stuff so i used an MCX connector which was small enough to epoxy into the shoulder of the hinge and sits flush with the body