Do any of these things work? We get rotten cell phone performance in our cabin up in the mountains. I was thinking in terms of a yagi aimed at the nearest cell site, and a passive or active coupling to the cell phone. Some commercial repeater box would be convenient.
John
John-
I understand they work, but are somewhat expensive.
If your cell phone happens to have an external antenna connector, it would be a lot cheaper to connect the antenna directly to it. One company that makes Cellular Antennas is Wilson Electronics, . I have one of their magnet-mount antennas that is about 12 inches tall. It requires an adapter to match the cell phone antenna connector.
I see that they also make Amplifiers/Boosters similar to what you asked about. You might contact them to see if their equipment would be useful at your remote cabin. You might be too far from the nearest cell site for it to work!
Fred
John,
I send you a Private Mail on this. Please look for it.
-mpm
Digital cellular is limited by timing. CDMA better than GSM, but it is not just a signal strength issue. Don't take my word for it, just google the GSM and you will see the limit is purely one of distance related to timing.
In the boonies, when the phone sniffs a GSM tower, I get a SOS rather than no signal. However, I doubt 911 would be reachable.
If you have a T-Mobile phone with unified mobile access (UMA), you can use your cell phone over wifi, retaining the phone number. This is for all services on the phone (voice and data).
that usually means the phone can see the tower from a another phone company
-Lasse
Try a corner reflector first before spending any money. Costs nothing to try it, and it might help.
Ed
On a sunny day (Sat, 11 Sep 2010 23:20:49 -0400) it happened ehsjr wrote in :
John Troll has enough money for a satellite phone.
Oh boy! The "Electrical Engineer" is stumped by an electrical principal. Come on, John! This one is even easier than the vapor phase degreaser!
Do you buy that "Active On" headache stick too?
Just so you no, idiot, you "repeater" is not legal.
But you *should* ALREADY know that.
That's it, fucktard. Take the forum, thumb your nose at it, and f*ck anyone else who wants to know.
You are even more stupid than Johnny is.
He'd be too stupid to use that right too.
Neither is something I'd care to spend a lot of time doing myself. I could design my own television or my own light bulbs, but it wouldn't make economic sense. And RF is about the only area of electronics that I haven't done much of, and that doesn't interest me much.
A passive signal booster, like an external RF-coupled antenna, would probably be legal. But "legal" only matters if it's likely to be enforced. You love to follow rules; I like to make and break them.
But you know little about any electronics, including this subject. I've recently gotten a lot of private scoop on this issue from experts.
John
AFAIK active repeater boxes aren't quite legit. You could try two yagi or helix antennas. One on the roof pointing to the cell tower, cable down into the room where you guys normally hang out, 2nd yagi pointing towards the couch or wherever you do your calls. That 2nd yagi should be shorter so it has a wider acceptance angle. But not too short. You can't boost reception through the whole cabin that way.
Make sure the polarization of the roof antenna is correct, usually vertical. And low loss cable if it's more than a few feet (Aircell et cetera).
Only an experiment will tell whether it'll be good enough.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Times Microwave LMR-400
---Joel
That cable with its 1" bend radius could be good since Aircell is quite unwieldy. A huge radius loop around the gable has a pretty low WAF :-)
I doubt John would need more than 30-40ft so he'll be under 3dB. Heck, even QuadShield could work. All one needs is 2-3 bars and in a cabin it's usually ok if the phone only works at one area.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
John,
Do you have internet at the cabini?
If so you could set up a microcell such as:
They are available for other carriers as well
kevin
d l
You are correct. However, I also get that SOS when I see a tower that is too far away for GSM operation. Now it may be possible that the tower at least knows I'm out there, i.e. it can ping my location.
Depending on your phone, there are ways to locate the cell site. The programs required are unique to the phone.
GSM site location is tricky. You can get unique information to identify the tower, but the location of the tower depends on a database from google. The database is terrible. I am told that CDMA sites indicate their exact coordinates
In urban areas, cell sites are not shown in the FCC database. Rather the provider gets a regional license and can put up the cellular site anywhere the municipality approves. If you think about it, there should be no other user of the frequencies, so who exactly would the FCC protect by forcing all sites to be under their control. Perhaps on the boundary between providers using the same frequencies, there would be FCC coordination. More often than not, if the cellular site is on a tower, it is in the FCC database. If it is on the side of a building, than it may not be listed.
Also femtocell. However going to T-Mobile UMA is the simplest solution. The feature was unique to Blackberry, but apparently some Android phones will be getting UMA. On UMA, the call can flip back and forth between wifi and cellular. It's really well done. I was dubious at first regarding UMA, and I found a bug very early in the roll out. It didn't handle touch tone properly. But that problem is gone.
I've done a bit of drive-by UMA phone calls in the boonies. That is, no cellular service, but a nearby house has wifi. One guy came out of the house and asked me if I needed any help. I just said "No. I just pulled over to take a call. It's not safe to drive and talk on the phone." I didn't say "I stopped by your house to borrow your wifi to make a phone call." A blackberry can easily make a wifi call a hundred feet from a router.
Are you licking the lids of just-opened paint-cans again, AlwaysWrong?
Yes, we have cable internet. We use Verizon for cell phones, although it would be nice to have a booster that works for most/all carriers, so guests could use it too. An illegal active booster sounds good for that.
John
On a sunny day (Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:22:05 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :
And that from somebody who not so long ago stated here: The Law as the distiction between good and bad. Something must have happened, enlightment? Cannabis? Got a speeding ticket? ...
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.