1995 Suburban WiFi Project (Under $200)

[mistaake]

Hey everybody! I'm going to be putting WiFi into my Suburban. I'm going to use a Ubiquiti Bullet M2-HP connected to a flexible omni-directional antenna on the roof of the truck. From there I'm going to go to a PoE (Power over Ethernet) injector and then to another network device which will broadcast a local wireless network I can connect laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. too.

Why not just use my laptop/tablet/smartphone to connect directly to the WiFi network and go through all this trouble? One simple answer - range. The wireless adapters/cards in any laptop/tablet/smartphone are not very powerful, simply because of cost, power, heat, and size constraints, compared to purpose-built equipment that is designed to connect to wireless networks with great distances. This would be very useful for road trips, camping, traveling, etc where WiFi might not be close by. I am considering living in my Suburban at least part time (not sure on that yet, but having reliable free internet would make this a much more attainable thing for my since I am a web designer/developer and having no internet means I'm not making any money)...

Ubiquiti Networks makes high quality low cost equipment for WISPS (Wireless ISPs) and allows local companies to compete with the hated titans of the industry. I have experience using a variety of their products both for business and personal use so when I got the chance to buy a brand new Bullet M2-HP for $16 I knew it was time to make my 1995 Suburban.

While some of you are probably going to want to kill me for this I am going to be making a hole in the roof of my Suburban for the antenna. This truck has 176K miles on it, is 20 years old, has crappy paint on the hood and roof, and doesn't have much resale value to begin with. Chances are I'll be it's last owner until it is either completely worn out or I wreck it (not that I plan on junking it anytime soon, but the point I'm trying to make is that nobody will care if there is a hole in the roof). if you have a nicer truck you might want to mount the antenna on a bumper instead and run the wire inside.

How it's gonna work: I'm going to mount the antenna in the roof above the rear cargo light. Since my light has already broken off, it's a perfect place to make a hole in the roof because the upper metal layer is already accessible. No modifications to the headliner will need to be made, so if I wanted to remove the mod I'd simply have to seal off the hole and put the light back in. The antenna is going to be mounted to a "bulkhead" which will seal off the hole from the elements. From there I'm going to go directly into the Ubiquiti Bullet M2-HP, to which an ethernet cable will be connected. This will run to the PoE injector and the rest of the equipment somewhere else in the truck.

An important consideration is signal strength. Every 1ft of antenna cable means -1db signal loss, which is why the Ubiquiti Bullet will be mounted right at the antenna and not at another less obvious location. A right angle adapter will be utilized between the antenna bulkhead on the inside of the vehicle and the Bullet so it doesn't stick straight down.

The actual equipment will be mounted elsewhere on a separate sheet of a material that is not flammable and/or sensitive to heat. I'm going to use a purpose built PoE injector designed to run off 12V DC rather than the standard style PoE injector which requires AC mains voltage to avoid running an inverter. Going from 12V DC to 120V AC and then back down the low voltage DC is stupid. It's much more efficient to go from 12V DC to 24V DC (for the PoE injector) and from 12V DC to either 12V DC or 5V DC (depending on the router/access point I end up using). A switch to turn the whole setup on and off will be attached to a relay which will be fused somewhere into the truck. I could certainly use some suggestions for that since I don't currently have a place in mind to tap into the electrical on the Suburban!

Parts list for the networking equipment side of things and the cost of each item (MSRP listed, though I did not pay full retail for any of this stuff). I have not yet compiled a complete parts list including things like switch, relay, wiring, etc. but that is to come! I am not including the second piece of network equipment required to serve as the actual wireless router for the "local network" for two reasons. First off, you could skip that entirely and simply use an ethernet cable directly connected to a laptop computer if you simply wanted to get online with one device, and second, because I assume that most people have a spare wireless router floating around. You don't need the latest and greatest router because speeds are limited through this setup anyway (the Ubiquiti Bullet M2 only supports a theoretical 100Mbps maximum anyway and real-world performance will probably be lower due to signal strength and distance) and you don't need to cover an entire home with WiFi, just a smaller area.

Tycon Power Systems TP-DCDC-1224 9-36VDC IN 24VDC OUT, 19W DC to DC Conv. - $36.95
http://www.streakwave.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=TP-DCDC-1224

Laird Technologies MA24-7N 7dBi Mobile Antenna (Select Mount) - $17.13
http://www.streakwave.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=MA24-7N

Laird Technologies AD-NF-NFB N Female to N Female Bulkhead - $4.95
http://www.streakwave.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=AD-NF-NFB

Laird Technologies AD-NF-NM-RT N Female to N Male Right Angle Adapter - $5.95
http://www.streakwave.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=AD-NF-NM-RT

Ubiquiti Bullet M2-HP-US High Power version Bullet 2.4Ghz 11N US - $79.00
http://www.streakwave.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=BulletM2HP-US

 

[mistaake]

< Reserved for later use, please ignore >

 

[df2x4]

While some of you are probably going to want to kill me for this I am going to be making a hole in the roof of my Suburban for the antenna.

Yup. That roof panel is around $1800 new from GM. No F'n way I'd do that, I don't care how bad the paint is.

While I can appreciate the ambition with this project as a fellow tech geek, I'd just simplify things a little bit and go with a less permanent setup. Honestly I use the mobile hotspot on my Sprint phone for purposes like this. Extra $50/month on the phone bill, but my phone functions as a wireless router that can connect up to 8 devices at once. That way you don't have to worry about being in range of anyone elses signal, either.

 

[GMRedline]

I like where this thread is headed.

 

[someotherguy]

I say chop it up. Older Suburbans with lots of miles have very poor resale value, so I agree with OP's assertions. Doesn't sound like he's making a huge hole in it or anything.

If someone wanted to fix it, no need to buy a $1800 roof panel from GM, just buy a $500 parts truck off craigslist or cut a panel out of the boneyard for next to nothing.

All that aside from the scope of the project, just sayin', no harm in cutting a small hole in the roof.

Richard

 

[skylark]

$1800 is the value of entire suburbans around here. I need to start scrapping roof panels!

 

[df2x4]

If someone wanted to fix it, no need to buy a $1800 roof panel from GM, just buy a $500 parts truck off craigslist or cut a panel out of the boneyard for next to nothing.

True, but going that route doubles your labor involved if not more. For lazy people like myself who would pay a shop to do this, it really doesn't come out much cheaper.

$1800 is the value of entire suburbans around here. I need to start scrapping roof panels!

Do it! If you found an immaculate one I might be interested haha.

On a related note to the project in this thread, I just had a look at the antenna setup. I have very limited knowledge on this, but I've always heard that omni-directional antennas are fairly unimpressive in most fields. Seems to me if you really want range to pick up free signals wherever you happen to be, you might want to consider a directional Yagi style antenna. You'll have to mess with it more, but it should give you much better range. Also would be a good excuse to have a magnetic roof mount setup and just pull it inside when you're done using it. Just my .02 cents.

 

[mistaake]

True, but going that route doubles your labor involved if not more. For lazy people like myself who would pay a shop to do this, it really doesn't come out much cheaper.



Do it! If you found an immaculate one I might be interested haha.

On a related note to the project in this thread, I just had a look at the antenna setup. I have very limited knowledge on this, but I've always heard that omni-directional antennas are fairly unimpressive in most fields. Seems to me if you really want range to pick up free signals wherever you happen to be, you might want to consider a directional Yagi style antenna. You'll have to mess with it more, but it should give you much better range. Also would be a good excuse to have a magnetic roof mount setup and just pull it inside when you're done using it. Just my .02 cents.

Keep in mind the antenna connector is standard so that I can go from an omni-directional antenna to a yagi antenna at any time. I will start with the omni-directional antenna to see what it can do for range as it will be far superior to the wireless capability of any regular WiFi-capable device. Storage space is easy to come by in the Suburban should I want to bring multiple antennas with me.

Sure, I could use my phone as a hotspot, but that gets expensive quickly. Streaming a few HD episodes from Netflix could very easily chew threw the data alotment.

Also, where I live, cell service is awful. No service at all at my home and spotty data for a few mins each way. The last three days my Comcast internet at home has been straight up not working. Yesterday it finally came back and hopefully will stay that way but a backup plan is always nice. Sure, I could purchase AT&T DSL but we had that here at the apartment when we first moved in and it was slow and unreliable as well. 6Mbps on a good day does not compare with 180Mbps from Comcast. With the Suburban having powerful WiFi I could connect to an Xfinitywifi hotspot or any other public WiFi hotspots in the area and have working internet at home, probably in excess of 10Mbps+ and in that situatuion power is not much of an issue in that case since I can just park the Suburban by the window and run an extension cord with a 12V DC adapter to the whole setup easily enough.

The entire project is focused around portability and versatility. No single other solution can do what this will be able to do and its uses far exceed the things I can list off the top of my head.

And yes, I might be able to sell this Suburban for $1800 if I'm lucky so I don't care about the effect on resale value. If I did want to sell the vehicle it's as simple as putting the cargo area light back in to cover it from the inside and patching the hole from the top. I've sold several vehicles and nobody ever bothers to look closely at the top of the roof.

 

[1999gmc]

So when you say road trips, do mean wifi while driving? Or just picking up a stronger signal when parked somewhere?

 

[df2x4]

So when you say road trips, do mean wifi while driving? Or just picking up a stronger signal when parked somewhere?

For what he's talking about, it's a "while parked" thing. There's no way you could hold onto a signal from someone elses router long enough to do anything while driving down the road. He's just grabbing other people's signal.

Although I guess you could find a bus or something with internet service and tail it down the highway.