Projector in garage too far to get wifi. other options?

[Wialli]

Hi All,

I'm planning to mount a projector in my Man-Garage for tv or internet - something to watch while chilling in my man-place supping a beverage and playing darts! (I already have electricity wired in to the garage form when I bought the place)

But it's at the end of the back garden. I don't think it's really viable to run and HDMI or ethernet from the house as it's about 25 meters away from the source, 15 of which is the garden, and I also think a wireless internet booster signal would be so weak by the time it got there that it would be useless.

Therefore I was thinking of getting a freeview box and installing a TV aerial on the garage itself to pick up the signal. I live in an area with standard 3 bed semis, so nothing in the immediate area over 2 stories. The garage also backs on to an access road, so there is a fair bit of space around it before the 3 bed semis start. So:

a. Does this sound like the best option?
b. Would the signal from a TV aerial be good enough to pick up the signal on a single story building?
c. If so, recommendations for an decent aerial at a decent price
d. Are they pretty easy to install and run?

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[slu]

if it was WIFI primarily you were after, the other option is running a network over your pre existing powerlines.

You can easily run a 500meg powerline adaptor network from your router to the sockets in the garage - they are pretty stable and more than capable of streaming full HD video.

 

[Sureitsoff?]

Careful

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...cuted-over-your-broadband-thanks-to-GCHQ.html

 

[Wialli]

Wow - that would be an unbelievably cheap and diy-free option. Just wifi would be fine as I could stream TV or get a chromecast or something.

But Sureitsoff? has raised some startling concerns. I'd rather not face a £5000 fine!

Any other solutions? Or would the proper aerial option work from a single story?

In the past when I was renting and my room had no aerial point, I used a small £20 in-room plugged in booster pointing out of the window and got some channels, but only some and the signal wasn't reliable.

But I could bolt to the wall a proper roof aerial and wire that into the garage.

As an aside, would there be any laws about tv in the garage, seeing as it's not part of the main house?

 

[Sureitsoff?]

strictly speaking from a planning aspect a garage if it is seperate from the house is not permitted to have an aerial fixed to it but......that is new build

 

[Sam Gangee]

Visitations from the interference police are extremely rare. They investigate complaints only. If you were to be visited, you wouldn't be prosecuted if you complied with a "cease and desist" order.

However, there IS a slight risk of broadcasting interference - especially if your electricity supply runs to the garage on an overhead catenary.

It would be more practical to run an Ethernet cable from house to garage. Make sure it's outdoor grade or protected from sun and weather. I just paint mine and that seems adequate.

Alternatively, use a "Bear Extender" in the garage. I have one and it works over an amazing distance. (Obviously it works better through windows than walls.)

 

[winston1]

Don't use PLT, it will cause interference to your neighbours and at last it seems Ofcom are taking it seriously.

A aerial on the garage sounds the best option and will work in a reasonable signal area.

 

[Sam Gangee]

Would the signal from a TV aerial be good enough to pick up the signal on a single story building?

Please divulge your full postcode if you want a useful answer.

And see http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/log-periodic_aerials.htm

 

[SimonH2]

Don't use PLT, it will cause interference to your neighbours and at last it seems Ofcom are taking it seriously.

Are they ? They seem to have spent years coming up with excuses for ignoring the law and doing nothing about it. PLT is already, and always has been, illegal under the Wireless Telegraphy Act - given the nature of the cabling, plugging in a PLT device is guaranteed to create interference, and that is illegal.

PS - for the OP, I'd suggest running a network cable out to the garage. If you want Freeview, then stick an aerial up - if it's a suitable aerial for the available signal strength then it'll work. See http://www.wolfbane.net/cgi-bin/tvd.exe? to find out what sort of signal strength you should be getting.

 

[Wialli]

Sureitsoff – So that suggests the garage is not covered under the TV licence of the house?

Sam Gangee – The electricity runs about 12” below the turf. I could run an Ethernet cable, but it would be pretty ugly and exposed. How does yours look, or is your garage closer? I could run it along the fence but that doesn’t sound practical. I could dig up the electricity cable again and latch it to that, but that may affect the signal. Bear Extender – Not heard of that, but I’d need a receiver in the garage for that then as wouldn’t be able to plug it straight into the projector.

Winston1 – I agree – PLT sounds like the wrong way to go – aerial depends on the law I guess as suggested by Sureitsoff

Sam Gangee – thanks, the LP20FHV looks quite nice and much less intrusive than I thought it may be. Does this simply have a socket that I plug the other end of the wire into, or does it need to be wired in?

SimonH2 – Thanks for that link. My results are below, based on the antenna being approx. 3m high. Running a network cable out there would be possible but difficult to hide the wire, as advised to Sam Gangee.

 

[Wialli]

These look a bit different from the standard aerials and much more visibly attractive:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/one-for-all-outdoor-digital-tv-and-radio-aerial-a57cw

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/outdoor-digital-tv-aerial-a50fz

Would one of these work?

 

[winston1]

These look a bit different from the standard aerials and much more visibly attractive:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/one-for-all-outdoor-digital-tv-and-radio-aerial-a57cw

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/outdoor-digital-tv-aerial-a50fz

Would one of these work?

Maplin are lying, there is no such thing as a digital aerial.
Those things (I cannot bring myself to call them aerials) are non directional and I'm not sure you can even adjust the polarity. If they did work so would a coat hanger on a bit of coax.

Note the quote gain figure is not aerial gain but that of the included amplifier. You can't beat a proper yagi or log periodic.

 

[SimonH2]

My results are below, ...

So you're only 3 miles from a local transmitter (Hemel Hempstead) and it looks like you should get a quite adequate signal from it.

Alternatively, click on the link for Crystal Palace (where it says TQ339712) and you'll get a chart showing the path to there - see what's in the way as that might be a better bet if there's not too much in the way (and lifting the aerial will help). On the other hand, the fact that you have a local transmitter suggests you probably have terrain blocking the signal from there.

A Log Per aerial will work for either as long as you put it the right way round - Hemel Hempstead needs the elements vertical, Crystal Palace needs the elements horizontal.

If you want to try WiFi to get the signal to the garage, then look for a "client bridge". You program this to connect to the WiFi in the house and it has an ethernet port on the back that you can plug just about anything into. As far as connected kit is concerned, it looks just like a normal wired network (just a bit slower !).
You can use directional antennas, but it's not needed for the distance you are looking at. One advantage of directional antennas is that you can minimise interaction with other WiFi networks - a problem in some places where there can be literally dozens of networks fighting over just 3 practical channels in the 2.4GHz band.

I've use Ubiquiti NanoBeam kit at work http://www.4gon.co.uk/ubiquiti-nanobeam-c-193_214_851.html
If you want to shell out, you can easily have a Gbps link over long distances with their other kit - but for your situation it'll be cheaper to run a cable.

And on that, don't run a network cable alongside the mains. An outside grade cable is only a little over 1/4" diameter so shouldn't be too obtrusive in most situations. If you wanted to bury it, you can buy steel wire armoured network cable - I've terminated some of this for customers, really not hard if you know how to cut the wire effectively without cutting into the cable

 

[SimonH2]

Maplin are lying, there is no such thing as a digital aerial.

+1 on that. Not only that, but the gain figures are cheating too by having an internal amplifier which absolutely cannot be as good S/N ratio) as a proper aerial with the same gain without an amplifier.

Good Log Per aerial
http://aerialsandtv.com/onlineaerials.html#Log36

Alternatively, you can go for a high gain Yagi (need to pick the right group - avoid wideband)
http://aerialsandtv.com/onlineaerials.html#Yagi18s

Hint: Ignore the single number given as the gain. What you need to do is look at the channels you need (44 to 59 for HH) and see what the graph shows the gain to be at those frequencies. Places like the site above give such graphs - and you can see that some of the stated gains are irrelevant if the frequencies of use to you don't happen to be those where the peak (they only ever give the "best" number) figure is.
See http://aerialsandtv.com/gaincurves.html


For a friend I recommended a Yagi18 (IIRC group A for a local Tx), and that's what I put up at my parents a while ago (group C/D before a shift to group A was mooted). But for home, I've just bought a Log40 because there's talk of moving us from group C/D down into group A in the not too distant future and I don't want to have to go and change the aerial again.

 

[Wialli]

Thanks for all the replys guys.

So what you’re saying is I shouldn’t get a digital aerial right I’m not sure what you mean by ‘gain figures’.

Hemel is only 3 miles away and there is no terrain in the way, so I would assume this would be the best one.

Crystal Palace is 22 miles away and the other side of London. I would have thought there would have been a massive amount of signal degradation with all the buildings and additional airwaves traffic caused by a big city?

I really want to avoid running a network cable down there, as it will mean running a wire all through the house or drilling a hole through the exterior wall, both of which I don’t want to do. I already ran an Ethernet cable and HDMI cable behind all the skirting boards and through a hold in the interior wall to the kitchen and that was a ball-ache. I would prefer an aerial or wifi solution.

How does the nanobeam wireless bridge work? Just attach it to the garage, point it at the house and connect it to the wifi as I would a laptop or smartphone? Would this then just give me strong wifi in the garage? Would I have to connect a device at the bridge end through an ethernet cable, or does it transmit wifi back out again? I'm thinking if it transmits wifi out, then I can just get a chromecast or something and pick up the signal. But as a chromecast doesn't have an ethernet port, it would need to pick up wifi.