Category Archives: Hardware

Category containing all information relating to hardware.

Review: 9DBi Wireless Router Antenna

2 Replies

I managed to dig out some money lately to buy a few gadgets and bits of kit, so you’ll probably see a few reviews on various items in the next few days. But first of all, I’ve got this 9DBi wireless router antenna.

I bought it simply because the little antenna that came with my D-Link DSL-2640B doesn’t quite cut it in my house. For some reason, the signal it emits just isn’t powerful enough to cover the whole of my small house, so I decided it was time for an upgrade.

After a quick search around on eBay, I found this. It is really a pretty good deal at just £6.99 so if you are having signal problems, I suggest you get one.

Most routers generally come with either built in antennas or removable ones. You are lucky if you have a removable one, because you can upgrade it. Sadly, built in antennas aren’t replaceable so you’ll just have to live with the poor signal range or just buy a new router.

If you do have a removable antenna on your router, you’ll be glad to know that you can use a wide range of different antennas. The most common type of antenna that is fitted to most routers by default is omnidirectional. This means that they broadcast in all directions – great if your router is in the center of your house but not so great if its in the corner of the house since a good 30-40% of your wireless power will be wasted going through the wall out of your house. You can get antennas that point in one direction, but these are less common and more expensive. Unless you’re really desperate, I’d suggest you stick to omnidirectional.

Another thing you’ll need to understand is the rating of the antenna. Most routers come with an antenna of about 3-5DBi which is fine for a small modern house. However you can get antennas up to about 9DBi which are much more powerful. Bare in mind they are much bigger than 3DBi antennas and you won’t be impressed if you want don’t like the look of your gadgets. F0r example, the one I now have (see eBay link above) is 37.5cm high so it will be quite hard to hide.

They are definitely worth the upgrade though. I am very impressed with mine, as the signal range is much better and I get much fewer disconnections which is good. The only thing I’m a little puzzled about is that my router says to lower the transmit power of the router if I install a high gain antenna – but why should I, doesn’t that just defeat the point of buying a more powerful antenna? Little odd.

Anyway, so yes, if you do experience wireless signal issues try getting a new antenna. Check that you can replace your antenna before you buy one for obvious reasons. If you can, you might find this makes a big difference.

Why bother on a high capacity laptop battery when you can get a car inverter?

Leave a Reply

My laptop is fantastic – it’s dual core with 2GB of RAM and is powerful enough for most of the tasks I need it for. There’s only one downside – the battery. It won’t last more than about 1.5 hours even on a good day. Hopeless – even for watching a short film.

So I was thinking whether I should buy a higher capacity battery. They aren’t exactly cheap. And then there’s the thought that in a worryingly short amount of time, it will be worn out and will need replacing again. But then I thought where is the place I use the battery the most? After a good brainstorm, I discovered that the place I use my laptop most is in the car.

I’d heard about car inverters before, but had been told they were quite expensive and weren’t capable of producing very much power. Well when I was wondering around the Maplin electronics store, I suddenly bumped into one. It claimed it was capable of producing 150 watts constant and a 450 watt surge. In addition, it was just £20 to include the inverter, plus a spare fuse just incase it blew. So I thought it’s always worth a try and bought it. Then I went straight back to the car and plugged in the laptop. Worked straight out of the box.

I’ve discovered that laptop chargers generally only need between 35 and 75 watts of electricity to run, so a 150 watt inverter was easily enough to get it going. Plus there are a number of things you can run with that amount of electricity – phone chargers, camera chargers, fans, even small TVs. You can even attach a double socket and power your phone and laptop charger at the same time. So it could be perfect if you are on a camping trip and you need a bit of juice for your gadgets and gizmos. My inverter even came with a low battery warning to make sure you don’t run your car battery flat, plus it has an overheat/overload monitor.

I think it’s a great idea. It saves having to get car chargers and high capacity batteries. And it just plugs into any car cigarette lighter socket. For only £20, it’s hardly worth missing. Mine came with a year’s warranty, so you can’t go wrong. It’s ideal to keep the kids happy in the back as it can charge games consoles and the likes, or charge up your essentials on the way to work.

I’d really recommend one. They are available online and I just got mine from a Maplin store in town. You just plug it into the cigarette lighter and away you go.

Review: D-Link DSL-2640B ADSL2+ Wireless Router – A brilliant budget buy!

1 Reply

I hate the supplied Tiscali router. It sucks. Port forwarding is stupid, there’s no DynDNS support, and overall it’s just a cheap piece of crud.

So, I decided to go and buy a new one. I needed to ideally stick to a budget of around £50, so I had a search around.

It wasn’t easy to find a router for under £50. I found out that routers are much more expensive than you think. I was rather surprised to be honest. If I’d have upped my budget  to £60 I would have probably found the task much easier – and I was thinking of doing so, until I found this.

Continue reading →

Ever heard of a wireless home webcam?

Leave a Reply

Have you ever heard of a wireless webcam for use in the home? No, not one of those spy cameras; I mean just a normal IM webcam for video conversations? Well, if you have a PSP (or a custom firmware one) and a PSP Go!Cam, you may already have one.

A piece of software has been released meaning that the PSP system can use the Go!Cam to send a number of photos over a local wifi connection every second, in theory meaning it is a webcam. It can be used with Windows Live Messenger and Skype.

Sadly, I doubt it is actually legal as it relies on custom firmware, which Sony doesn’t approve of, so I am not going to post a link to it. However, it does show that Sony should really be doing this on the PSP. Why can’t Sony make the PSP work as a webcam – it would be very cool.

If you are a PSP owner, you’ve probably noticed that Sony have been neglecting us slightly in terms of PSP firmware updates. Come on Sony, do something about it!

Freecom Network Drive and Linux (Ubuntu to be specific)

2 Replies

I get a lot of Google searches relating to the Freecom Network Drive and Linux. They seem to relate to not being able to get it work properly, but I haven’t really posted much about the FND on Linux because… I just don’t use Linux. So for the benefit of my readers, I decided I’d take a leap of faith and download an ISO of Ubuntu just to see whether I could get it going.

And, frankly, I’m not totally sure what all the fuss is about. People seem to claim that they can’t access the drive or the config panel for it. But I didn’t have any problem at all – I just got Ubuntu working and connected to my wifi and it almost worked immediately. I could get to my network drive config panel at 192.168.1.2 (in my case, different users have different IPs) – just logged in as normal and it went easy peasy. Then as for getting to files, the Network window detected my drive most of the time and displayed all the folders and if not I could just do a local FTP and that worked just fine.

I’m not sure if people were/are having problems with other versions of Linux… but I mean it shouldn’t really make much difference. If you want to drop me a line or leave a comment with your Network Drive Ubuntu related problem and I’ll happily investigate for you. At the moment, I just don’t see much of a problem, so I need some more details.

If you are having problems, let me know and I’ll look into it for you.