Cantenna, directional antenna with gain

Introduction

Many people have been asking how to boost their wifi signal, here is my small contribution with an antenna I made and use successfully.
The objective of this tutorial is explaining how to build & use a simple antenna system with USB adapter.

Explanation

This antenna is directional and very simple in construction and costs only 80p or 1 Euro or $1.40 !! for the can, excluding the cost of the USB stick (which I presume you already have) and blue tack . Basically Blu-tack is a kind of plastersene. My USB stick is a D-Link G122 ver B1.
It’s a can which contained dog food, any can of the same size will work. This one measure:
Length = 170mm, Width = 100mm, Length from inside bottom of can to centre of USB stick = 40mm
Cut a rectangular hole as shown in the photo Pic 1. Then smooth the entrance of the can so the edges are not sharp, I used the rounded end of a hammer.
Put the USB stick inside the can and secure it with blu tack or silicon sealant. You will need to adjust the USB stick by moving it in and out for optimum received signal by pointing the can at your AP and using airodump-ng and watching the signal strength numbers go up, signal quality will go up too (airodump-ng V0.7 has quality read out). You could also use Netstumbler on windows to make your adjustment. Once you have the optimum position then secure it using blu tack or silicon sealant.
The AP needs to be a reasonable distance away (not in the same room) so that you don’t swamp the receiver and get a false reading on your software. The open end of the can is where the wave enters, point his towards the AP! It is highly directional and a few degrees left or right of the target will make a significant difference.
The measured gain is around 13dB which is 20 times the strength of the USB stick without the can. This is amazing gain for the simplicity and “cheapness” of the system! This is what I measured using professional measuring equipment from work, I’m astonished at the results myself! Due to the internal construction of other USB wifi devices the gain may vary. Also by inserting the USB device the other way around could improve signal strength, it is all very device dependent. I then use a short length of USB cable to connect the PC to the Cantenna.
The size of the can is important when designing a proper antenna system, however, the parameters of this can are in fact not the correct ones for the frequency of wifi but as you will see, work very well and are a compromise.
Once constructed, the can should be placed on a tri pod or some form of support facing the AP. I used 3mm copper wire, which is easy to work with, to make a simple stand for the Cantenna.
Please feel free to ask questions or leave feedback on the forum about your construction and use.

Pictures

Some linux commands

Starting & Stopping

shutdown -h now Shutdown the system now and do not
reboot
halt
Stop all processes – same as above
shutdown -r 5 Shutdown the system in 5 minutes and
reboot

shutdown -r
now Shutdown the system now and reboot
reboot Stop all processes and then reboot – same
as above
startx Start the X system

Accessing & mounting file systems

mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom/mnt/cdrom Mount the device cdrom and call it cdrom under the /mnt directory
mount -t msdos /dev/hdd/mnt/ddrive
Mount hard disk “d” as a msdos file system and call it ddrive under the /mnt directory
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1/mnt/cdrive Mount hard disk “a” as a VFAT file system and call it cdrive under the /mnt directory
umount /mnt/cdrom Unmount the cdrom

Finding files and text within files

find / -name fname Starting with the root directory, look for the file called fname
find / -name ”*fname*” Starting with the root directory, look for the file containing the string fname
locate missingfilename Find a file called missingfilename using the locate command – this assumes you have already used the command updatedb
updatedb Create or update the database of files on all file systems attached to the linux root directory
which missingfilename Show the subdirectory containing the executable file called missingfilename
grep textstringtofind/dir Starting with the directory called dir , look for and list all files containing textstringtofind

The X Window System

xvidtune Run the X graphics tuning utility
XF86Setup
Run the X configuration menu with automatic probing of graphics cards
Xconfigurator
Run another X configuration menu with automatic probing of graphics cards
xf86config
Run a text based X configuration menu

Moving, copying, deleting & viewing files

ls -l List files in current directory using long format
ls -F
List files in current directory and indicate the file type
ls -laC
List all files in current directory in long format and display in columns
rm name Remove a file or directory called name
rm -rf
name Kill off an entire directory and all it’s includes files and subdirectories
cp filename/home/dirname
Copy the file called filename to the /home/dirname directory
mv filename/home/dirname
Move the file called filename to the /home/dirname directory
cat filetoview
Display the file called filetoview
man -
k keyword Display man pages containing keyword
more filetoview
Display the file called filetoview one page at a time, proceed to next page using the spacebar
head filetoview
Display the first 10 lines of the file called filetoview
head -20 filetoview
Display the first 20 lines of the file called filetoview
tail filetoview
Display the last 10 lines of the file called filetoview
tail -20 filetoview
Display the last 20 lines of the file called filetoview

Installing software

rpm -ihv name.rpm Install the rpm package called name
rpm -Uhv name.rpm
Upgrade the rpm package called name
rpm -e package
Delete the rpm package called package
rpm -l
package List the files in the package called package
rpm -q
l package List the files and state the installed version of the package called package
rpm -i –force package
Reinstall the rpm package called name having deleted parts of it (not deleting using rpm -e)
tar -zxvf archive.tar.gz or tar -zxvf archive.tgz
Decompress the files contained in the zipped and tarred archive called archive
./configure
Execute the script preparing the installed files for compiling

User Administration

adduser accountname Create a new user call accountname
passwd accountname
Give accountname a new password
su Log in as superuser from current login
exit Stop being superuser and revert tonormal user

X Shortcuts – (mainly for Redhat)

Control|Alt + or - Increase or decrease the screen resolution. eg. from 640×480 to 800×600
Alt | escape
Display list of active windows
Shift|Control F8
Resize the selected window
Right click on desktop background
Display menu
Shift|Control Altr
Refresh the screen
Shift|Control Altx
Start an xterm session

Printing

/etc/rc.d/init.d/lpd start Start the print daemon
/etc/rc.d/init.d/lpd stop
Stop the print daemon
/etc/rc.d/init.d/lpd status
Display status of the print daemon
lpq
Display jobs in print queue
lprm
Remove jobs from queue
lpr
Print a file
lpc
Printer control tool
man subject | lpr
Print the manual page called subject as plain text
man -t subject | lpr
Print the manual page called subject as Postscript output
printtool
Start X printer setup interface

Some More

ifconfig List ip addresses for all devices on the machine
apropos
subject List manual pages for subject
usermount
Executes graphical application for mounting and unmounting file systems

gSharkDown Download music on Ubuntu


gSharkDown is a GNOME desktop application for downloading and playing audio files from the grooveshark  service. It is based on the groove-dl library from George Stephanos.

Features

Some of the importart features:
  • GNOME Desktop integration
  • Ease to use
  • Playlist with loop option
  • Song information with album picture
  • Remembers the playlist on exit
  • Notifications on track change (disabled by default)
  • Multimedia Keys support under GNOME Desktop

Dependenices

gSharkDown depends on the following libraries:
  • pygtk2 (python-gtk2 == 2.18)
  • ConfigObj (python-configobj)
  • python-gobject
  • python-gstreamer0.10
1.- Find your artist or song

2.- find your song and clicking on the +


Before you configure the folder where you download, the song right click on the icon bar of the program preferences, and finally her song download.

Download at https://bitbucket.org/vkolev/gsharkdown/downloads/gsharkdown_0.2.7-1_all.deb

Source and credit to The website for all Linux Mint users
Special thanks to Ubuntu Untuk Malaysia


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