Reddit reviews Tupavco TP512 Yagi Wi-Fi Antenna 2.4GHz 15DBI H: 30° V: 25° Outdoor Directional Wireless N-Female

This sounds like a super fun project. I think there's a few questions I still have before I expect the most quality answer:

1. What's your upgrade budget?
   
   
2. What's the topography and vegetation like? Is maintaining line of sight an issue?
   
   
3. Is there any preprocessing that can be done on the drone to downsize the data throughput requirements? Compression? Etc. You aren't running every pixel of a 4k image into a classification NN are you?
   
   
4. Can you estimate the actual bits per second required for upload/download? I don't know howbig a 4k image is off the top of my head.
   
   
   So here's my 2 cents as a HAM and general nerd:
   
   

• You'll get better range with 2.5 GHz over 5GHz, but less throughput. If your bandwidth requirements allow for it, 2.5 would be my choice.
  
• A shitty antenna that's high up or has clear line of sight is likely going to be better than a nicer antenna on the ground. Consider upgrades consisting of ways to get your antenna higher up.
  
• Repeaters can be cheap with something like little zigbee units to form a little mesh network. Keep in mind you can use directional antennas between nodes to get better network reliability with fewer nodes. A 2.5GHz yagi with 15dBi gain is like $25.

I use a fairly reliable antenna from the router and an adapter to switch from SMA to TNC. It works wonders and it's relatively cheap.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008Z4DNFC/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2XK1LYKSDHPGL

I'm not too familiar with the dev side of things so do you think just allowing niantic alone would cut it or do they have different login server domains, etc?

In all things tech, there are 3 qualities

• Build Quality
  
• Cheap
  
• Effective
  
  As is usual - pick two. You can not have all 3 at the same time.
  
  That said - the absolute best (gain wise) are the 'grid" type parabolic reflectors. Next in line are the Wifi yagis and finally, the co-linear verticals. The last having the added advantage of not being horizontally directional (at the cost of vertical gain).

You can re transmit an WiFi signal using extenders or a bridge, but it is likely against your school's acceptable use policy. They may be able to detect your rouge device, contain it and effectively shut you down. Additionally you may maybe risking the passcode you use to connect to the wifi network and finally it is probably a crime to alter your schools network without their permission.

With all that said, throughput and latency often seem to degrade quite badly when you extend the signal. Also the problem is in both directions. Not only do you need to receive a usable signal, but you need to transmit a strong enough signal back to the campus or their receiving antenna will not hear you.

Without a proper site survey it's difficult to say if it's possible it get it working. This is the way I would approach the problem.



Walk the boundary of your property using [inSIDDER] (http://www.inssider.com/) There's free version somewhere, the playstore also has a free version if you're an android user. Then determine where the best signal is and where you can place a directional antenna.

A -70 dBm is going to be the minimum signal strength for a stable connection. So if you're at -80 dBm with your current setup you can improve your reception by upgrading your antenna.

The fewer obstacles the signal has to pass through the better, so check outside and up high. Think in terms of "line of sight". Try to figure out where the closest campus access point is physically located in relation to your location, and point your antenna directly at it. Insidder can help you with this step.

You can build your own [cantenna] (http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html) if you're so inclined or [spend 30$ on something like this] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Z4DNFC?psc=1) and be done with it. Make sure you get the right connectors for your wifi card, and enough cable. If you're mounting the antenna outside, grounding it is important. You may be able to mount it in a attic or just set it in a window.

Here is the mobile version of your link

This is a good solution. I haven't heard the change polarization thing though. Lots of towers stack antennas front and back top and bottom. Different frequencies in that case, often separate bands. That getting said in this case there is no transmit. The worst case here and it's time delayed multipath I think it would be fine.

Tupavco TP512 Yagi Wi-Fi Antenna 2.4GHz 15dBi H:30° V:25° Outdoor Directional Wireless N-female https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Z4DNFC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AAk7AbQGG4BRK

That's what I'd try first. Back to back them on a guyed mast.

I know nothing on the subject, so noob questions below:

Is it this? https://www.amazon.com/Yagi-WiFi-Antenna-2-4GHz-15dBi/dp/B008Z4DNFC

What's the difference between that and https://www.amazon.com/USB-Yagi-directional-Antenna-802-11n-2200mW/dp/B003LLS5JI?

What booster do I need? What is a booster? How do I convert whatever jack is there to USB?

I've set up some 5 and 6 ghz beams that went over a mile, and they look weird. Like, looks like a TV antenna but with 20 elements. Super narrow beam path. Like this but on steroids.

Actually this one might be worth a try, and at $30 you're not putting a hole in your pocket.

Have you already tried just using highly directional 2.4GHz antennas such as this https://www.amazon.com/Yagi-WiFi-Antenna-2-4GHz-15dBi/dp/B008Z4DNFC/ ? That'd probably be the easiest solution so long as the building inbetween isn't killing the signal too much. If it is, setting up a repeater on a side/corner/roof of the building preferably where you've got line of sight to both ends of your connection would work.

700MHz does require an FCC license, which would've been relatively easy to get when the card was new, but now cellphone carriers are often using that band for their LTE service.

Can't see any USB to mini PCIe adapters available, there are some for mini PCIe, which is only possible since mPCIe uses both a PCIe and a USB interface on the card.

Might I suggest a yagi like this one (https://www.amazon.com/Yagi-WiFi-Antenna-2-4GHz-15dBi/dp/B008Z4DNFC).

Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Tupavco-TP512-Wi-Fi-Antenna-2-4GHz/dp/B008Z4DNFC

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You will need some other tech to connect it to your local access point. Something like a N-Type Male Connector to RP-SMA Female Antenna. They come as cables of different length. You'll want to mount the Yagi antenna on a pole so it has nice line of sight to its target. As has been mentioned, they are quite directional, so you will need to dial that in. The above antenna might not be the ideal one for your situation, but something *like* that should do the trick.

The Yagi antenna connects to an access point, which then broadcasts regular 802.11n/g wifi for your computer to pick up, or has ethernet hookups.

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Best of luck.