The Portable Wi-Fi Booster – Four Simple Items To Make Your Own, Even While Travelling!

I prepared this piece first, because I needed some portfolio pieces for Odesk to show buyers what I am capable of. Most of my earlier work is covered by contracts and non-disclosure agreements and other nasties that come with being a writer-for-hire. New content was in order!
Of course when figuring out what to write about I chose something that was of interest to me. That doesn't narrow it down very much because there is seriously little that doesn't interest me.
Anyway I came across several plans for parabolic boosters for wi-fi antennas. I even examined and tried the famous cantenna, I found it was a bit more complex than the average traveller or aged geek-want-to-be might prefer. I finally found a video on youtube and modified the instructions (a lot) to suit what I wanted and needed.

Unless you are in the perfect spot in your home with nothing between you and your router or maybe you are wired with cable then you have probably experienced weak signals and unreliable wi-fi connections.

I own a home pc in the perfect spot in my home, unfortunately it is also the spot with the weakest signal from my router, and I also have a laptop with an external antenna which was not doing the job while travelling. I tired of buying $50.00 boosters that did not seem to work, or worse worked and then broke quickly with continued use and dismantling (pigtail connectors are delicate, expensive, and with continued use from insertion and removal as in the case of a traveler with a laptop, they will wear out speedily).

Oh yes, one more detail, I could not build a simple lever even if provided the pre-cut part! Does this sound like an impossible situation or even worse, a familiar one?

The situation wasn’t hopeless though. I found the answer for me in the parabolic antenna booster! The name sounds a bit intimidating and strange, doesn’t it? It’s actually a home-made wi-fi booster that can be built by even the clumsiest of people (that would be me). If I can, then you can too, given only a few minutes and some very simple items. There are a number of variations and of course levels of skill in building boosters but when working with the technologically impaired (myself namely) then simpler is always better.
The wi-fi booster I chose to explain today is a easy one perfectly suited for travelling – the simplest I could find – in terms of tools and skills needed. I discarded the idea of a cantenna for today, because the tools required are a soldering iron a Pringle’s can, a pigtail (pigtail weaknesses have already been mentioned) and some heavy wire, and these are not items the run of the mill traveler might carry about or care to obtain routinely.

If by chance you don’t happen to have these simple items they can be picked up cheaply if you are travelling. If you are home, the chances are you have these items already on hand. Also you will need to be able to print out a template available from freeantennas.com. This is important in that it will make your job easier and your booster more efficient (someone has already done the math). The template I used is EZ 12 Parabolic Reflector Template.

The equipment list is as follows:
1. Scissors
2. Adhesive – Elmer’s glue or contact adhesive, contact adhesive is somewhat less messy.
3. Tin foil of any sort, though I used the heavy variety.
4. Thin carboard – a cereal box, manila folder, or even a couple of microwavable popcorn boxes. Use your imagination as long as the cardboard is pliable and yet has some rigidity, and will fit at least one segment of your template, it should do the job nicely.

The steps are easy after you gather your materials. Print out your template and place the template upon your cardboard and glue in place. I glued the entire sheet of paper to the cardboard ( I told you that I was construction impaired) when the pieces had dried I cut them out carefully (this gave me a more rigid surface that could stand some handling than the plain printing paper would have) If you have a steadier hand than mine you can cut the template paper and trace to the cardboard and avoid gluing the template to the cardboard, or if you don’t plan using the amplifier with a laptop and traveling, which requires dismantling frequently, you can use the plain paper version and skip the cardboard.
The square piece I then glued to a matching square of tin foil. After it was dry, I trimmed it out and cut out the slots, those are the six holes you see on the template.
It was home free after that, after folding the curved segment of the template over to fit into the slots in the square segment and give it the proper curve – voila I had an quick and very cheaply made wi-fi booster that can stand some handling and travel!