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Home Brewing - Well, besides the obvious meaning of making one's one
favourite amber fluid in the back shed, home brewing also means
constructing one's own equipment at home, rather than purchasing off
the shelf components.
In the case of wireless networking, ACA regulations prohibit home
brewing of the active components of the network (i.e. network cards,
amplifiers and the RF portions of access points - we are allowed to
make APs out of a Linux box and a type approved 802.11b card, of
course). However, one significant component of the wireless network
that can be homebrewed is the Antenna [1].
Directional antennas such as the YagiAntenna [2] and ParabolicAntenna
[3] are easy to homebrew, and the Cantenna [4] is ridiculously easy to
make. A few OmniAntenna [5] designs are floating around, but none
we've seen are yet good enough for our purposes (but, hey, experiment
some more). Happy homebrewing!
A Slotted WaveGuide [6] is relatively easy to make, and provide very
good performance for an Omni antenna, as well as being relatively
compact.
Even easier is the PatchAntenna [7] from this site [8]
APInABox [9] and WeatherProofing [10] show examples of how to put an
Access Point [11] in a weatherproof box. You can then mount it on your
mast to minimise the amount of CoaxialCable [12] needed.
You can then HomeBrew [13] your own Power-Over-Ethernet [14] to
remotely power your weatherproof Access Point.
Oh, and if you indulge in the other form of homebrewing, don't forget
to invite all the Melb Wireless People [15] around to sample your
work! (Funnily enough - some tins of ingredients for the _other_
Homebrewing are close to the size we look for in cans... - JamesHealy
[16])
Links:
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[1] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?Antenna
[2] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?YagiAntenna
[3] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?ParabolicAntenna
[4] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?Cantenna
[5] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?OmniAntenna
[6] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?WaveGuide
[7] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?PatchAntenna
[8] http://www.rc-cam.com/gp_patch.htm
[9] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?APInABox
[10] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?WeatherProofing
[11] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?AccessPoint
[12] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?CoaxialCable
[13] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?HomeBrew
[14] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?PoE
[15] http://melbournewireless.org.au/wiki/?Members
[16] http://melbournewireless.org.au/?JamesHealy
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