A couple of questions for the experts:).

[JayCeeDee]

Hi all – I’ve got a couple of unrelated questions for those on here more expert than my general level of wisdom:)
A couple of times over the winter, the wife left her interior light on in the car, didn’t use it for a week and the battery went flat. I used my car to jump-start hers, but it was a pita as my battery is under the drivers floor so all the carpets on that side need stripping out. Plus it’s not recommended these days with so much electronics to risk.
I’ve got a spare battery from my car that still works, but I’ve loaned out my battery charger to I don’t know who and don’t want to replace it if it’ll be coming back to me some time soon.
First question – I’ve got a wall wart that is 12v/1500mA, – will this charge a car battery ( albeit slowly ) without any problems? I’m doing it in the garage, but I just thought I’d ask first.:)
Second question – I’ve got a weak wi-fi signal in the bedrooms here. When my son comes to stay he uses the spare bedroom and his iPhone, iPad and laptop all get heavy use. The other side of that wall is our bedroom where I mainly use the iPad for SkyGo, NowTV and Amazon Prime Video. There is a weak signal there and a fair amount of buffering.
I have a pair of Homeplugs ( Comtrend PowerGrid 9020’s ) and a Sky Wireless connector ( AirTies SC201 ). I can get an ethernet port to the spare room with the Homeplugs, but I want to get a wireless Internet signal the various devices can connect to. Is this possible using the Sky connector, or am I trying to go the wrong way down a one way street so to speak?? If not, then what would be the best ( cheap ) device to give me a wireless signal?

Cheers as always.

[Boris]

re. 1.   – I have one of these

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/solar-powered-12v-15w-battery-auto-trickle-charger-l58bf

which I leave on the (south facing) dash in our second car [which doesn’t get much use over the winter] plugged in via the cigar lighter socket .  Seems to work OK

Never trust an atom - they make up everything !

[Boris]

Re. 2 – use an old wireless router (if you have one) – if not I can help you there 🙂

See http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-turn-a-router-into-a-wireless-repeater/

Never trust an atom - they make up everything !

[JayCeeDee]

I just know that will never get plugged back in after the SatNav or whatever else. I’m trying to pre-empt the inevitable here, I know it’ll happen again, so just looking for an easier jump start solution, just wanting to make certain it’s a safe one.

Regarding 2, I’ll give that a try. I know I’ve got a couple of spare routers around here. I didn’t think 2 routers were good on one BB line, but that set-up seems to work. Cheers Boris.

[Richard]

Re using a spare router as a Wifi extension.
Turn off DHCP on the spare router.
Connect the incoming network cable to one of the ‘normal’ LAN (four?) ports, not to the WAN port.
Enjoy extended coverage.
Dave suggests using the same name (SSID) and password as on your ‘main’ router, but set the two to use different channels, which ever are less popular in your area.

Edited to (hopefully) remove on-screen formatting instructions.

[Dave Rice]

The key to using an wireless extender is it’s position. Many people place it in the weak area as they think it amplifies the signal, it doesn’t. It halves the signal coming out so must have a good signal coming in.

Re DDWRT I doubt your old router will be able to have it’s firmware flashed. Even if it can it’s still just a repeater and probably no more “powerful”, so location, location, location still applies.

Choosing the same SSID and password will not let you roam seamlessly around the house. You need WAPs that are capable of talking to each other and handing off to do that properly. Otherwise your devices drivers will decide when that happens. MACs are extremely unhelpful in this respect. iOS makes it’s mind up and there’s nothing you can do. Windows and Android let you rank them in order of preference.  For that reason I would use a different SSID so that you can manually intervene whatever the device.

A Homeplug with wireless capability is a good alternative for casual use as location is less of an issue. In your position that’s the route I would go down if you can’t position the Sky repeater properly. If your adapters are AV200 or Av400 compatible they should just work with another manufacture, unless you changed the password. In which case change the password of the new device to match.

[Richard]

Sure, it will not support roaming but many devices latch on and stay, ‘sat’, at least for a while, happily I have no experience with Apple gear, apart from changing batteries in an iPod.

My TV connected boxes are fairly static as are the TVs. Having one SSID and one password certainly beats the heck out of having to maintain a string of different ones that you can then forget – have one currently ‘running free’ while I try to remember its WiFi password.

I did pick up the suggestion from one of your earlier posts, though a quick scan did not trace it; have you changed your view recently? Due to a lack of wired ports and no spare data switches I have recently had to add several devices via Wifi and I found it a right pain entering their configuration details. So much so I nearly dug out an old 10mb hub to lighten the finger load.

Happy breakthrough I found a switch in a cupboard while clearing other old stuff out.

[Dave Rice]

No I haven’t changed my mind, but there’s been some quite complicated scenarios discussed in the past and some that have gone round in circles.

The decision to change to a different WAP is totally under the control of the devices drivers, unless the WAPs can do “zero handoff”.  As you can imagine that’s not home grade kit as the WAPs have to talk to each other. The devices can have a habit of hanging on too long, hence why having a different SSID you can easily identify can be handy. It also makes no difference to the device. Even with the same SSID it sees it as a different network.

Passwords for different SSIDs? Just give them all the same one.

[blacklion1725]

Homeplug with a wifi extender built in has worked well for a few that I’ve suggested it to – particularly to two folks where SkyGo has not been as successful as Sky hinted. External Ethernet if logistics allow is also a solution I used here for a bit and still use at my mum’s.

[Ed P]

blacklion1725 wrote:

Homeplug with a wifi extender built in has worked well for a few that I’ve suggested it to – particularly to two folks where SkyGo has not been as successful as Sky hinted. External Ethernet if logistics allow is also a solution I used here for a bit and still use at my mum’s.

+1

The Sky fitter who installed my set-up said that the Sky kit was pretty carpy (Dave’s wifi analysis said the same). He said if you have Ethernet use that for internal connectivity and just use your own wifi kit for phones, tablets etc. For some unknown reason Sky make this an ‘advanced’ not recommended option.

[Dave Rice]

It depends on what you want to achieve. 4mbps+ will see you stream HD and that’s all most people want.

My daughter has just informed me she will be hosting a LAN party on Wednesday evening. There’s an Ethernet cable going to the satellite receiver in the kitchen so I’ll probably hard wire them all in. Or I could set up a dedicated LAN for them, I have enough kit laying about!

[Ed P]

According to the Sky bod it was the wifi transmission power (lousy aerial) rather than the bit rate.

[JayCeeDee]

Well, I looked up my old router and it’s not on the DD-WRT capable list, but no matter. There are easier routes to go down.

I wasn’t looking to make it seamless, just improve the signal strength in the 2 rooms. My first thoughts were to use something that I had, or could adapt, but that seems to be a bit of a kludge.

I’ve done a walk around the house with Wi-Fi Analyzer on my phone and in the spare room doorway, the signal is -70dBm, by the socket it’s -75, by the bed it’s -85/90. On the back of what Dave said, I’m thinking about one of THESE – with those numbers would that do the job?

I’m looking at Dave’s comment – “Many people place it in the weak area as they think it amplifies the signal, it doesn’t. It halves the signal coming out so must have a good signal coming in.”

I don’t have any spare sockets in the hallway ( middle ground @ -60 ) but there is one in a cupboard, ( -70 ) this end of the hallway, but that puts an extra wall in-between both rooms.

 

It would seem Dave’s suggestion of homeplug WiFi like THIS is the solution. Now to get the wife on board, – it would be so much easier if our son asked for it as that was the magic potion to the wife’s heart and purse!!

 

Anybody have any thoughts on using the wall wart to charge the car battery in the garage??

[Dave Rice]

IMO at -75 that’s too low. Shame about the extra wall.

That TPL Homeplug kit is the way I’d go.

[JayCeeDee]

Thanks Dave, much appreciated. ?

[Author]

Posts