Motorhome WiFi, iBoost

[Dottie]

I'm sitting in a pub and using their wifi....finally! I have a 3G (data only sim) and a 4G (with contract) mifi...none have worked, yet my phone does, just...heading home on Sunday to work out if it us the settings.
Devon and Cornwall is bad for reception, I believe, so may try fon and iBoost next holiday!

 

[aeronic]

Well I think I fixed my problem with the panel antenna and router. Ill test it on this weekend and then post some instructions if anyone else goes down this route.

 

[Larkrise]

Agree re poor reception in Devon & Cornwall- our 3/4G router on 3 rarely got good reception and the iBoost didn't figure much either as most of our sites were too remote to get a Fon router. So we were forced to survive with occasional connectivity when travelling between places... not too great a hardship!

 

[motacyclist]

I'm sitting in a pub and using their wifi....finally! I have a 3G (data only sim) and a 4G (with contract) mifi...none have worked, yet my phone does, just...heading home on Sunday to work out if it us the settings.
Devon and Cornwall is bad for reception, I believe, so may try fon and iBoost next holiday!

The iBoost gives you an additional chance of getting a usable connection, it often works in the most unlikely places; conversely it often doesn't work when you would expect it to!

On our recent Scottish trip we were able to find open wifi signals but unfortunately many of them were Highland Wifi which routed us through to a subscription page ...

Applecross Campsite was great, free wifi but only usable around reception, so campers would be huddled around outside pecking away at their phones. Not so for us, big fat signal on the iBoost from the other side of the field

 

[campandfly]

I'm sitting in a pub and using their wifi....finally! I have a 3G (data only sim) and a 4G (with contract) mifi...none have worked, yet my phone does, just...heading home on Sunday to work out if it us the settings.
Devon and Cornwall is bad for reception, I believe, so may try fon and iBoost next holiday!

I have found the best reception in Cornwall with what used to be Orange now EE. We often watch BBC iPlayer etc on the road no problem, and the phone reception usually is very good.

 

[MattBW]

I've bought a Solwise Rocket and a usb repeater, sounds like it does the same job as the iBoost.

I may try a test of the range in it by taking a walk in the park with it and a portable 12v battery pack. Be interesting to see how far it can work at.

 

[reserves]

Would love to hear your feedback, much cheaper than the iBoost system.

 

[WelshGas]

Only if you have the knowledge to programme and troubleshoot problems. I don't so have to pay for that.

 

[MattBW]

A little update, the Solwise arrived today so I did a little test.

First tried the rocket, can confirm doesn't work with 10.10. Version of Mac OS. So if you want to use it just with the antenna then you will be disappointed. Doesn't seem to be any working drivers I could find unless I was on 10.8 or older.

With Win7 it worked no problems.
Picked up a lot of extra hotspots probably double what I could normally see at my House with the aerial indoors. This was including 3 fon points. I never knew they were there.

So then I plugged it into the Wifi repeater.

Relatively easy to use but not entirely intuitive unless you're a little techie. The instruction though will work if you follow them to the letter.

Handy feature is being able to see the speed of the connections in the area and the signal strength. So I could see my own wifi at 300mbs and a few others at 100mbs. The fon points were 54mbs. Regardless the max speed of the wifi repeater seems to be 72mbs so more than enough for the max fon gives but not Upto the max speed of many routers. I may tweak the settings to see if this can improved.

Will do some range tests at the weekend. So far for 72quid I'm happy but if I had just bought the rocket, being a Mac owner i'd have been returning it for no driver. With the repeater drivers aren't needed.

 

[reserves]

A little update, the Solwise arrived today so I did a little test.

First tried the rocket, can confirm doesn't work with 10.10. Version of Mac OS. So if you want to use it just with the antenna then you will be disappointed. Doesn't seem to be any working drivers I could find unless I was on 10.8 or older.

With Win7 it worked no problems.
Picked up a lot of extra hotspots probably double what I could normally see at my House with the aerial indoors. This was including 3 fon points. I never knew they were there.

So then I plugged it into the Wifi repeater.

Relatively easy to use but not entirely intuitive unless you're a little techie. The instruction though will work if you follow them to the letter.

Handy feature is being able to see the speed of the connections in the area and the signal strength. So I could see my own wifi at 300mbs and a few others at 100mbs. The fon points were 54mbs. Regardless the max speed of the wifi repeater seems to be 72mbs so more than enough for the max fon gives but not Upto the max speed of many routers. I may tweak the settings to see if this can improved.

Will do some range tests at the weekend. So far for 72quid I'm happy but if I had just bought the rocket, being a Mac owner i'd have been returning it for no driver. With the repeater drivers aren't needed.

Many thanks, makes interesting reading, shame about the lack of an updated Mac Driver.

Look forward to hearing if you can tweak the max speed.

 

[MattBW]

So I couldn't find any obvious way to tweak the max speed, and reading online it seemed complicated. I tested the performance the old fashioned way by using it. Consider that 72mbps is equivilent of about 7meg broadband, so pretty good.

Streamed Netflix, Amazon and Iplayer without any issues, even got some HD films without issue, websites seemed to appear instantly.

Happy to see it can also support usb dongles, so plug it in and turn it into a hotspot if you don't have a mifi. I won't use this function but some might.

Hope tonight to do a little range test.

 

[rippers]

I'm at the point of making a purchase and just got a couple of Q's

We are looking at buying the UBIQUITI NanoStation Loco M2 (with mount) and the MikroTik RBmAP2n. My bro is a tech so going to sort the set up for me.

1. I thought I read some where the NanoStation is only as powerful as the power supply, so would it better to use the inverter to power this up with the supplied 24v power adapter rather then the 12v cigarette adapter like Iboost use? I think its only 2watt.

2. I also need a 3G/4G solution and was looking at one of the Huawei solutions but my brother when looking at the specs of the MikroTik suggested using a 4G dongle in the USB socket.. potentially with an external aerial. Has anyone else looked at doing it this way?

 

[chrisw]

Hi rippers, I have a cheap 12V cigarette adapter which works fine for both devices. For your battery this should be better than the 24V adapter powered through the inverter. Regarding the 4G dongle you have to make sure to get one which is supported by the mikrotik. Mikrotik is afaik Linux based so Google may help.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MattBW]

Can confirm tonight that I've managed to get the speed unto 150mb/s by enabling the 40mhz option, this doubles the speed but does potentially reduce the range a little from the router. As you're in a camper van the range doesn't really need to be very big.

This doesn't effect the range of the antenna to the hotspot you're connecting to.

 

[reserves]

Can confirm tonight that I've managed to get the speed unto 150mb/s by enabling the 40mhz option, this doubles the speed but does potentially reduce the range a little from the router. As you're in a camper van the range doesn't really need to be very big.

This doesn't effect the range of the antenna to the hotspot you're connecting to.

View attachment 9411

Excellent.

So overall would you recommend the units?

Thinking of ordering today.

 

[MattBW]

I've not used it in the van out in the field yet and will do this weekend but I am quite happy with it so far. The screenshot above shows the wifi visible from my Mac (top right) and the extra ones the rocket picked up (main screen) although there are more available than fitted on one screen (another page).



I'll let you know on our test in Malvern at the weekend.

 

[rippers]

Hi rippers, I have a cheap 12V cigarette adapter which works fine for both devices. For your battery this should be better than the 24V adapter powered through the inverter.

Hi Where did you get this adapter? Thanks!

Would this do it?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/regulated-car-power-adapter-1a-with-6-charging-tips-l17ar

Edit just found a bit of info from the router:-

• DC power jack (5.5mm outside and 2mm inside diameter, female, pin positive plug) accepts 8-57V DC
  

 

[reserves]

I've not used it in the van out in the field yet and will do this weekend but I am quite happy with it so far. The screenshot above shows the wifi visible from my Mac (top right) and the extra ones the rocket picked up (main screen) although there are more available than fitted on one screen (another page).



I'll let you know on our test in Malvern at the weekend.

I went ahead and ordered as I'm off to France on Wednesday, I'll let you know how I get on

I'm going to try to get the Rocket working on Mac first directly, apparently it can be done with a few work arounds

If not I have the router so will give that a go.

 

[MattBW]

I went ahead and ordered as I'm off to France on Wednesday, I'll let you know how I get on

I'm going to try to get the Rocket working on Mac first directly, apparently it can be done with a few work arounds

If not I have the router so will give that a go.

Let me know how you get on, would be interested if you manage to get the rocket working without the router. I wrote to mediatek to ask for a driver, didnt get a response yet.

Used it at the weekend for an hour or so without any issues for a hotspot I couldnt see from my tablet without the router. Pretty happy for the price.

 

[rod_vw]

As far as I can see the iBoost kit with a directional aerial consists of these items...

http://linitx.com/product/ubiquiti-nanostation-loco-m2-airmax-mimo/13255

http://routerboard.com/RBmAP2n

Plus bespoke 'front end' console on the router by Motorhome wifi.

Anybody used this combination in its native format?

I believe that the router will accept a 3G/4G USB dongle. Again anyone tried it? There is a forum for these routers, one thread here http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=77535

Rod

 

[rippers]

I couldn't get a definitive answer on the which dongle was compatible so ordered a Huawei 5573 and Netgear aircard antenna.
All of my toys arrive tomorrow so will let you know how I get on

 

[rippers]

Parts didn't arrive do not use Senetic for these parts had a nightmare with them and finally got a refund and reordered the parts through LinITX.com I hope they do a better job

 

[rippers]

Parts arrived and we have spend hours trying to get the buggers to work

The router works fine, the nano works fine, they both light up, connect together and link up and I can scan wifi networks and join them and have good reception but no matter what we try it just won't connect to the internet

Any ideas?

 

[rich-s]

You need to set the nanostation up as a router, and the mikrotik as a bridge. That's how I did mine and it seems to work ok. If you struggle, send me a pm and I'll try and send you some screenshots. Unfortunately I'm really busy on the campsite just now so you'll have to bear with me for a reply.

 

[welshwestie]

www.outsideourbubble.com/secure-private-rv-wi-fi-and-making-a-better-park-connection-for-under-100

Have a look at the above link, it might help.