Man Cave Wifi

objon · 19 Aug 2015

I recently completed construction of a man cave, at the end of our c. 30m garden.

It comes complete with electric, water, WC and a bar. Excepting that I want to stream online TV down there, I need never leave.

Unfortunately I didn't run any CAT5 down the garden when the builders had a trench dug for drains. So, I now need to connect to our WiFi down the length of the garden from the house.

Given that I need a new router anyway, this may not be a massively expensive omission. But, I want to leave my router sited at the opposite end of the house to the garden. Basically meaning I need to boost the Wifi signal across then house then down the garden.

I've done the obligatory internet research and found a plethora of WiFi repeaters, extenders, external and internal antennae. All of this leaves me no nearer a solution, just more confused.

So, in short, have any of your good selves had (and solved) a similar problem? Can you recommend good (or warn of bad) hardware to solve my connectivity issue.

Many thanks.

endecotp · 19 Aug 2015

At the house end, can you run a wire from the router to the wall facing the garden?
Is it line-of-sight or are there trees etc. in the way?

Look for "building to building wifi" boxes. Then connect from that to any off-the-shelf wifi router box in your "cave".

Things might get more interesting if you need to communicate directly between devices on the cave network and devices on the house network.

MarkBarl · 20 Aug 2015

Assuming that the "man-cave" is on the same phase as your house, using something like the tp-link powerline range of devices would probably be the simplest way.

mattylad · 20 Aug 2015

A high gain log periodic wifi antenna connected to your router and a high gain antenna on the wifi access point should do it.

mattice · 20 Aug 2015

I've got a BT branded repeater - you place it towards the edge of range and guess what it 'repeats'

I was surprised how effective it is. It reaches my man cave 22m away.

SimonH2 · 21 Aug 2015

A pair of Ubiquiti NanoBeam units ?
Run a cable from the router to the back of the house, use the NanoBeam units to bridge it to the shed, then once at the shed you do what you want (switch for wired devices, WiFi access point for wireless stuff.

Or couldn't you run a cable round the edge of the garden (along the fence) ? If you try that then make sure yo use external grade cable.

foxhole · 24 Oct 2015

I would use a power line as mentioned.

objon · 25 Oct 2015

Thanks all for taking the time to reply. For some reason I was only notified by the site of yesterday's reply!

New router signal just about makes it to the 'cave' unaided. I'll try out power line adapters to create a hard connection.

Sam Gangee · 19 Nov 2015

Place a metal tray or aluminium foil behind your router to reflect the otherwise wasted signal in the direction of your shed. The distance between router and reflector may be critical so experiment.

rolyatescort · 28 Jan 2016

MarkBarl said:
Assuming that the "man-cave" is on the same phase as your house, using something like the tp-link powerline range of devices would probably be the simplest way.

I use powerline within the house and then have a tp-link av500 in the man cave which extends the wired network and transmits a cloned wi-fi signal. Simple set-up and ensures that all wired and wireless devices in the man shed have good signal

SimonH2 · 28 Jan 2016

You also ensure that your broadband isn't as good as it could be, and FM radio isn't as good as it could be, and some radio bands are completely unusable for a bit around you - cue the usual "non-one cares about a few "grey beards" and their hobby, but it' not just radio amateurs affected. Powerline ethernet is illegal, all the authorities know it's illegal, but none of them want the hassle of trying to put the worms back in the can - in fact the authorities put a lot of effort into finding excuses for it being an SEP (someone else's problem).

The only way these units "pass" emissions testing (as required to be able to market them in the EU) is to cheat cheat in a way that makes VW's efforts seem like a schoolboy effort. Basically, they plug one unit into a filter to prevent any signal getting to the mains wiring - ie they are tested in a rig that simulates a completely non-working network. Everyone knows that once connected to real wiring, and running a real network, then the wiring acts like a leaky feeder and sprays broadband RF interference at high levels across a wide band.

rolyatescort · 29 Jan 2016

That's absolutely awesome but as it has zero effect on any FM device in my nice, remote, house and rigorous speed testing has already decisively proved zero impact to broadband speeds I really couldn't give a stuff

diyer56 · 18 Feb 2016

SimonH2 said:
You also ensure that your broadband isn't as good as it could be, and FM radio isn't as good as it could be, and some radio bands are completely unusable for a bit around you - cue the usual "non-one cares about a few "grey beards" and their hobby, but it' not just radio amateurs affected. Powerline ethernet is illegal, all the authorities know it's illegal, but none of them want the hassle of trying to put the worms back in the can - in fact the authorities put a lot of effort into finding excuses for it being an SEP (someone else's problem).

The only way these units "pass" emissions testing (as required to be able to market them in the EU) is to cheat cheat in a way that makes VW's efforts seem like a schoolboy effort. Basically, they plug one unit into a filter to prevent any signal getting to the mains wiring - ie they are tested in a rig that simulates a completely non-working network. Everyone knows that once connected to real wiring, and running a real network, then the wiring acts like a leaky feeder and sprays broadband RF interference at high levels across a wide band.

I agree - and now Sky are including it in their "Sky Q" range of products. It will be everywhere soon!

diynot

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Man Cave Wifi

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