{"id":3214,"date":"2011-01-17T08:08:45","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T08:08:45","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-04-19T14:06:36","modified_gmt":"2020-04-19T13:06:36","slug":"my-automated-home-nigel-giddings-installing-broadband-in-a-rural-location","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/reviews\/my-automated-home-nigel-giddings-installing-broadband-in-a-rural-location.html","title":{"rendered":"My Automated Home: Nigel Giddings – Installing Broadband in a Rural Location"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this months ‘My Automated Home’ feature, Nigel Giddings shows us his ingenious set-up that grabs a 3G signal from one corner of his rural idyll, beams it 300 meters back to his home and redistributes it to the family.\u00a0 If you’re in the countryside and conventional ADSL or cable broadband is not available, then there’s still hope.\u00a0 Read on for all the photos and details.<\/p>\n

Submission by: Nigel Giddings<\/strong> – For ten years now domestic customers have had fast access to the internet via \u2018Broadband\u2019 delivered by ADSL. I\u2019m sure the vast majority of people reading this will have a domestic ADSL connection with speeds exceeding 1 Mbs on the download, some may even have \u2018Broadband\u2019 delivered by other methods with some people lucky enough to have fibre running at 50Mbs! I would suggest it is impossible for people with this type of connectivity to imagine what it would be like to be sent back to the dark ages (the late 90\u2019s) when speeds were measured in Kilobits rather than Megabits\u2026<\/p>\n

My family and I recently decided to have a change of lifestyle, having lived all our lives within 20 miles of London we decided to \u2018emigrate\u2019 to Cornwall. We decided to move to a rural part of the county, no town or village life for us. Since April we have been living on Bodmin Moor, many of you will have heard of Bodmin Moor and the Beast that is supposed to live here, in fact we are a few miles from the hamlet of Bolventor which is the location of Jamaica Inn made famous by Dauphine du Maurier in her book of the same name.<\/p>\n

The downside of such a great location is that technology has passed it by. We do have mains electricity and water, although some of our neighbours don\u2019t even have that\u2026 We do have telephone service although the cable length is twice that which can support ADSL, I have also been told that even dial-up struggles due to attenuation on the line.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

A view from the \u2018back garden’<\/p>\n

Off course I checked all this out before we moved, but it didn\u2019t stop us. With enough effort most things can be overcome and the location was too good to pass by. Options for Broadband included Satellite or ADSL delivered to another location and extended by point to point WiFi. Mobile (wireless) Broadband wasn\u2019t an option because the only coverage locally was provided by Vodafone and only as GPRS (2.5G).<\/p>\n

\"Using 2.5G Data<\/strong> – Having moved house in April 2010 and because much of my time was being taken up with work in the Middle East I had made no progress with a broadband solution and the family were reduced to using 2.5G through USB\u00a0 dongles and GSM handsets\u00a0 which was much less than adequate. E-mail would dribble in and browsing was very hit and miss, not ideal when your trying to start a new business. However, even at these low data rates (circa 50Kbs) the family were typically using between 4 and\u00a0 5GBs of data a month.<\/p>\n

A quick solution would have been to install a satellite link. However, at \u00a31,000 install and a monthly fee of \u00a330 plus it was not a cheap option. This may have been the solution but even at \u00a330 a month you are capped at 3GB download which would not meet our needs based on our current usage when restricted to 2.5G. Previously when we had \u2018Broadband\u2019 via ADSL we would consume 40 ~ 50GB a month.<\/p>\n

A glimmer of hope<\/strong> – A recent visit by a friend reopened the discussion on what solution to use. My friend and his wife use a number of mobile devices with different mobile networks, in particular his wife uses a \u20183\u2019 SIM for data. My friend, who was more optimistic about mobile coverage in Cornwall than me suggested we take a walk around to see what was available. I was somewhat surprised to see that we had 3G coverage at the edge of our site on a piece of high ground. Especially when having reviewed the serving sites on the OFCOM website sometime earlier it indicated all the local sites used by the various operators were 2G only!<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"<\/p>\n

Coverage plot showing coverage of the \u20183\u2019 network locally. The red star shows where we were able to get a signal. I have to congratulate \u20183\u2019 on their prediction s\/w. The Blue star shows were I live<\/p>\n

A bit of further testing showed that it was possible to receive a 3.5G signal (HSDPA) with a theoretical maximum download of 7.2Mbs. Happy Days!<\/p>\n

What to do now?<\/strong> – So having established that \u2018mobile broadband\u2019 was available in the area there was now the issue of how to connect it back to the house. Although the signal was still on our site it was 300 metres from the house. The limit for Ethernet over CAT5(e) is 100 metres. I did run into this limit once before at my previous house but was able to install a simple 100M switch midway to act as a repeater, I was lucky as I had a garden shed with power to house the switch half way along the route. This was installed as a temporary solution (it lasted a couple of years and I cut the cable twice accidently during that time while cutting the grass!). The link did suffer from a couple of lightning strikes in that time and any \u2018permanent\u2019 solution would need protection, either lightning arrestors or even an upgrade to fibre. This time it was 300 metres with no power options along the route and while I don\u2019t cut the grass, the sheep do that, trying to protect a delicate cable over that distance through rough ground with roaming ruminants would be difficult.<\/p>\n

With the advent of \u2018Mobile Broadband\u2019 a few interesting devices have also been developed. One is the MiFi, a 3G Modem back to back with a WAP (WiFi Wireless Access Point) but these are meant for personal use with self contained batteries and low power outputs. Another option is a 3G gateway, the Huawei B970 has a 3G transceiver with modem compatible with HSDPA (3.5G theoretical maximum download of 7.2Mbps), a 4 port 10\/100 Ethernet switch, and built in WiFi. You can also connect an analogue telephone line and it is powered by a USB lead.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

A Huawei B970 sitting on the car seat while parked at the top of the hill plugged into the cigarette lighter with a USB lead showing Power, WLAN, Signal and connection (Blue=3G) LEDs<\/div>\n

The obvious thing to do was to use a 3G gateway at the hilltop and then have a point to point WiFi link back to the house. Power would initially be supplied by a leisure battery through a USB converter<\/a> until a more suitable 230V supply could be provided. (That is another story\u2026)<\/p>\n

The Huawei B970 is not designed for external use so needs to be protected from the weather. Because the speed archived on the 3G connection is dependant on signal strength it also made sense to mount the Gateway as high as possible in what was a marginal signal area. It was therefore decided to mount the unit at the top of a 20ft pole.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"
\nThe Gateway located in a box on top of the 20ft pole on the \u2018Hilltop\u2019 looking towards
\nthe house 300M in the distance. A power lead is taped to the pole and connected
\nto an 85AH Leisure Battery on the ground<\/p>\n

\"
\nA view inside the box with a cigarette lighter 12VDC – USB 5V converter<\/p>\n

Bridging the 300 metre divide<\/strong> – With the Gateway 20ft in the air, on a hilltop, in a weather proof box (plastic) and pointing roughly towards the house, with almost clear line of site, there was not enough WiFi signal to reach the house some 300 metres away. The free space loss for 2.4GHz over 300 metres is approx 90dB.<\/p>\n

The system levels can be assumed to be:<\/p>\n