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Wi-Fire extends wireless range to 1,000 feet

engadget.com — "A new Pennsylvania-based startup, hField Technologies, has just gotten FCC approval for their new supercharged WiFi antenna, the Wi-Fire."

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 2, 2006

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38 Comments

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  • mywhitenoise, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22that's not a Mac, stupid.
  • cappslite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Here come the wardrivers
  • kob0724, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19@rolotomasi
    "built some patched madwifi drivers"

    Cause thats something easy for the average lay-person to do...
  • jasutton, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21Next Headline: Pringle's Can Sales Triple Over Night!
  • Bob042, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15"The USB antenna boosts reception of faint WiFi signals, extending the range of existing networks up to 1,000 feet."
    I'd say it can... It seems to not only send out strong signals, but is able to pick up the signals of that normal WiFi 1000 feet away and make it useable.
  • dattaway, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I've been installing those small wireless USB devices into existing high gain antennas that work well pointing at the city for a few miles:

    http://www.dattaway.org/antenna2.jpg
    http://www.dattaway.org/antenna1.jpg

    Cheap and a lot less than $150.
  • wphj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Picking up WiFi signals from farther away.
  • tim04, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1210 bucks that this'll make your jewels glow green
  • Slashriffs, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13With the intel card in my dell 9300 i can pick up wireless from about 450 feet away.
    And thats even through 2 walls.
  • mywhitenoise, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"And when was the last time you saw a silver mac?...I would totally buy a silver one, not white or black...."

    uh...MacBook Pro?
    Also I don't like Dell, but don't blame them for the battery explosions, Macs have that problem too. Blame Sony, they're the one's who made the batteries.
  • vdxc, on 09/29/2008, -0/+7don't forget the dell laptop in the picture
  • steelmaverick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Its a semi-directional antenna, so i wouldn't expect it to pick up all the wifi networks.

    But DAMN.
  • rolotomasi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Oh please. The Inspiron 9300 uses an IPW2200 card which doesn't even support packet injection. I slapped an Atheros 5212 based Mini-PCI card in my Inspiron 1300 and built some patched madwifi drivers, and now I have full monitor mode, hostapd support and packet injection capabilities. And the range is great too. I can pick up the wireless network from the car dealership 200 meters away.
  • Cam_86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The problem i have with this, is your sticking a expensive(one would assume) antenna on a receiver that is on its way out. Id rather just spend that money on a internal 802.11n minipci card, and mod it to accept after-market antennas... Just seems stupid to buy a high end 802.11g card now.
  • returnofmalv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"supercharged" "fire", no thanks.
  • djgump35, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I know it was a bad movie, but the movie "Pulse" was about this very type of thing. People wanting to get a better band of wireless, and then the freaking ghosts came out. I am not crazy, I am just warning you......Think it would have been better with some ghost sex or something, but that is a bit off subject......
  • RayBan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2How might I build/buy one of those? Looks really cool.
  • kounavi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2that's very nice! is it a 14dbi yagi from solwise? I like your setup!
  • kounavi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There is very little info as to how this really works on that article.
    I believe this http://wifinetnews.com/archives/005981.html is more accurate (not my site or anything).

    What this 'antenna' (actually adapter plus antennae) can do is not very different from what other adapters with a good sensitivity, combined with the correct antenna do -years now. The clever idea is that they use both antenna technologies (omnidirectional and directional) and i suppose a clever algorithm to choose which one to use, in order to improve the link, in different situations.

    @Twinkie
    it's not an antenna. you cannot connect your antenna to your wireless adapter through USB. its an adapter+antenna(e) set.
  • kefs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2am i the only one initially reading wii-fire on all these wi-fire headlines.. man.. where is it already.. ugh..
  • JeffH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They probably need drivers, and the developers probably do not have Mac drivers yet (or Linux for that matter, though when's the last time Linux has even been bleeding edge with WiFi support?).
  • ElBob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have absolutely no doubt that this can be hacked to work with a Mac, but even without that, this is awesome. I have worked with wireless a lot, and this kind of system used to take a whole lot of creative soldering to get it to work.
  • TwinkieTheKid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1how exactly can it be incompatible with macs, it's just an antenna. anybody want to explain this to me?
  • HonoredMule, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1not if g speeds are beyond sufficient and rang is more important to you anyway.
  • Smigge87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1WOW A new antenna... To boost my wifi range I built a parabolic reflecting dish out of cardboard and aluminum foil and it has extended my range to around 500 ft.
  • Marshalrusty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Also I don't like Dell, but don't blame them for the battery explosions, Macs have that problem too. Blame Sony, they're the one's who made the batteries."

    Don't blame anybody at all. I'm not saying that Sony shouldn't double check their product testing department, but they're not the only company to have a recall.

    Ultimately, they found a problem, made it public and offered a recall (actually I don't know if Sony is taking the fall for this, since so far there isn't a recall on batteries used in their own laptops). These types of things can happen even if extensive checking is done, and it's not as if you're walking down the street and seeing laptops exploding left and right. There have been reports of overheating, but less than 10 reports of actual explosions. That's not few or anything, but the situation is being handled. Companies are still run by human beings, you can't possibly expect every product to be perfect.

    And I'm sorry for posting another off-topic comment, just thought it was important to get this in.
  • Clemenceau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you're going to use a tower anyway, why not just use Wi-Max?

    Oh yeah, because then you'd have to buy a new card. There lies the problem in advantageous upgrades.
  • rolotomasi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6kob0724: Uh, it's pretty easy. Just grab the patch from http://patches.aircrack-ng.org/ and the corresponding driver from http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-old/ and build away. I can post full step-by-step instructions for Ubuntu if anyone's interested.
  • rolotomasi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's cool, but most Mini-PCI cards have aux connectors for a second antenna, so you can easily add an antenna connector to your laptop: http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000270073731/

    Less bulk and you can use your laptop normally without the external antenna if you need to.
  • jimbo92107, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11000 feet? WOW, that's about as much as my Hawking Hi-Gain directional adapter does, and it cost me about $55 bucks two years ago. I surf my own router from across a big parking lot and around a corner from my apartment. That's about 800 feet, and I get about a 40 percent signal (around a corner, not line-of-sight). Of course, if I had Hawking's newer parabolic adapter, then I could get usable signals from about two blocks away. Is that a thousand feet?

    Point is, this is a problem that's been solved a long time ago, if you don't mind plugging in an external USB adapter. What I'm wondering is, where are the internal MIMO adapters for notebooks?
  • AlanKc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2How much?
  • rolotomasi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0RayBan: here's something with instructions: http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000433073796/
  • rolotomasi, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2These guys could sell penis enlargement pills and use the same photos of this (arguably cute) chick.
  • D3koy, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1Yes, it is a dell so it could at any point have total existence failure(or a bad battery) and explode. And when was the last time you saw a silver mac?...I would totally buy a silver one, not white or black....
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1And the practical application for another piece-of-crap accessory is?.....
  • steelmaverick, on 10/12/2007, -17/+2Sorry, looked at the pic closer and i saw the Dell logo, thought it was the apple logo.

    But should she really be using that laptop? Couldnt it like, EXPLODE?!
  • Muyoso, on 10/12/2007, -20/+2That is cool and all, but can the laptop or other wireless device send the signal 1000 feet back? No, No it cannot.
  • steelmaverick, on 10/12/2007, -28/+1LOL, it says its Mac-incompatible, but in the pic a girl is using it with a Mac.

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