Sketchy DIY "Superfast" broadband

[Vortex11]

Daily Mail article:

I thought it was a joke at first.

[spuorgelgoog]

Wouldn't it have been better to put the 4G in the top box and the heavy battery nearer the base?

Owain

[Vortex11]

I have a couple of STANLEY toolbozes like those. They are certainly NOT waterproof at the handle.

The whole assembly does not look as if it would survive a storm (good ol' horizontal rain)

[dennis]

Not well designed at all. You put the dongle in some plastic drain pipe and cap the end the same as you do if you are making a DIY outdoor wifi. You use POE to power it and a Rpi or use and old phone and make a wifi hotspot. You could probably just put a MiFi in the tube but I have never tried that.

He probably won't have super fast broadband if his neighbours copy the idea.

[GB]

"Mr Guy, who has worked in IT since the 1980s, had found that the strongest 4G signal was on farmland miles away from his house. "

So he has run a fibre optic cable for miles to his house? He either has a damn large farm or very obliging neighbours. Not to mention the cost of the fibre optic cable, which he says is £1/metre, so he's used a few £k worth of cable? And he's buried it, or it's above ground and just waiting for some cow to stand on it and break it?

[The Other John]

This is the Mail - don't expect accuracy!

[tony sayer]

In article , Vortex11 scribeth thus

No its quite possible but he'd have been better off to run the 1.3 KM link by cable to power the gubbins and used 5.8 Ghz to link the signal back to base. Still worth a try:)...

[tony sayer]

Really?, over that distance using what CAT 5 Dennis?.

[Bob Eager]

And why have either box above the solar panels anyway?

I can see why he wouldn't use cable (and thus POE). I've seen damage from lightning strikes in that situation, so fibre was a better choice.

[dennis]

CAT5 poe will easily do 100m and the link to the Rpi was unspecified. The "miles" of optical fibre cable is misleading as cheap multimode fibre won't go for very many miles. Why would BT use the more expensive single mode fibre if cheap stuff did the job?

[Dave Liquorice]

Well the one with the 4G kit in it needs to be as high as possible. The Solar panels just need to be somewhere that isn't shadowed. TBH those panels don't look anything like big enough to run the kit and charge a battery to keep the kit going 24/7 mid-summer, with full sun all day, let alone mid winter.

Even very basic power budget calculations for a miserly 10 W of kit gives you a panel rating nearer a 200 W. 10 W = 240 WHr/day to be provided in a couple of hours either side of midday (winter) = 60 W but that doesn't take into account battery (in)efficiency (80%?) or

*a* dull day (double the required energy) = (240 * 2 / 4) = 120 / 80

• 100 = 150 W, 200 W gives a bit "in reserve" but still border line in keeping the kit running in the middle of winter IMHO.

'cause ethernet only goes 300'? Well that's what the spec says, one might be able to push it a bit further but not "miles".

If the stack gets hit it'll be dead. How much energy will get to the end of "miles" of CAT5? The ethernet to fibre convertors also consume energy. If you use something like the TP-Link MR2030 that does everything (to ethernet) in one box plus a 4G dongle with a total power rating of 5 W.

As he's getting > 50 Mbps and over "miles" he'll be using two singlemode fibres and a media convertor taking 5 W ish.

[tony sayer]

and that will tail of rather badly after that..

and the link to the Rpi was unspecified.

Well it seems it was about 1.3 KM better to use armoured 1 mm run around a hundred or so volts and transfer to the required voltage level, back link by 5.8 Ghz microwave and all that variable "sunny" power isn't a problem any longer...

[Andy Burns]

It'll be expensive if he actually uses it much ...

Above a certain distance, one singlemode fibre, with dual wavelength SFPs will save money ...

[Dave Liquorice]

This is true, 141.8 GB download so far this month.

If I was doing this I wouldn't run just a single fibre but a cable containing lot's of fibres(*) so when (not if) it gets damaged there ought to be some optical paths left. Getting the terminations done might be a problem with a "random" length of cable. One end could be factory terminated of course or buy say a pre-terminated 2 km length and not worry that the physical route is only 1.3 km, though I'm not sure if keeping that excess 700 m on the drum would degrade the signal with singlemode fibre.

(*) AIUI BT rarely put in anything less than 96 core fibre cables, the price difference between 96 and 48 core isn't significant when compared to the installation costs, even with existing, useable ducting in place. Start having to dig trenches...

[tabbypurr]

Stick 240 in one end you should get your 5v at the other :)

NT

[Dave Liquorice]

If the load is right and doesn't change. B-)