Wifi booster?

What?

I've been suffering from weak wifi coverage in the workshop from the outset. The problem is that when we designed this whole extension to the house, it made sense to have it built so that it met all the building regs ("code" in the US and Canada), so that it might be worth more than it cost to build. 

I did most of the "second fix" myself, namely the wiring, plumbing, heating, painting, lighting etc, so saved a fair bit of the cost. Including the kitchen / dining room extension (aka "sun lounge"), utility room and toilet, it cost something like £50-60k plus several years of my life. Obvs I got the electrical installation tested and certified by a qualified electrician and the building work was inspected and signed off by the local building control office.

The upshot is that the walls between the workshop and the existing house are cavity wall construction (ie 2 walls, separated by a cavity filled with insulation). While this is great for noise and thermal insulation, it's also wonderfully effective at blocking wifi. Even the roller door is aluminium. I've got a "TP-Link Deco M9 Plus"mesh router system running the whole house but naturally it barely makes it through here. 

I suspect the bottom line is that most of these routers are designed for the US market where most houses are constructed mainly from wood ie relatively permeable to wifi signals.

I even tried a Powerline extender at one point but it barely worked. I think I can blame the wiring for that, as I have an armoured steel cable feeding a dedicated consumer unit in the workshop. This makes the route between the main router and the workshop sockets rather tortuous / torturous (take your pick).

What to do? In a last gasp attempt at using technology, I bought one of these supeydupey Wifi 6 range extender things.

Did that help? Did it shite. The problem remains the same ie maintaining contact with the mothership in the house.

Plan B, then:

I've considered this before but never quite got round to it - fit an external aerial / antenna outside the workshop where it can be pretty much guaranteed line of sight to the main Deco router.

To my limited recollection, these wifi routers typically have an array of 2 or more aerials that connect to the main PCBA by means of small "UFL" (UHF) connectors. If I can unplug one of those and replace it with a length of coax leading to an external, wall mounted twig, surely this should do the business.

Found a handy teardown report on these Deco M9 Plus things and it showed how to open them up. Sure enough, there are 6 such PCB aerials distributed around the circumference of the PCBA. So let's get an aerial and see if it works....

Bought one of these Chinesium twigs:

Managed to thread the coax cable through the roller door frame:

The Deco unit is disembowelled while I test it out. 

Works nicely, so let's tidy it up by mounting the SMA plug on the top cover. 

This holder thingy keeps the wiring tidy and provides a means of mounting the Deco using the mains plug and PSU.

A suitably positioned hole allows the SMA socket to be mounted on the cover.

Here it is in its final embodiment.

And showing a reasonable connection back to the main Deco in the house.

The connection to the Nucbox in the workshop isn't bad now.

We'll call that done. Hopefully my Samsung work laptop will also work - it's the most profoundly deaf of the various wifi devices there.

Stained glass window soldering

Here's our inner front door. It's probably one of the few original doors in the house and has an original stained glass panel. Not surprisingly, the lead joints have fatigued after 93 years of the door being slammed several times a day. The middle of the panel flaps a good half inch when you waggle the door open and shut.

I couldn't stop The Stupid Fat Bloke from removing it and starting to remove the panel. He'd whipped the door off and made a start before I knew what he was up to. Oh well...

Got the panel out without it completely disintegrating:

I previously bought a fine Chinesium soldering iron for the purpose of resoldering the damaged joint. It has a massive boss end tip and is rated at a Chinese 200W. I have to say it didn't fuck about but after 10 mins or so, the temp had risen way above the recommended setting of ~350-380C, so that the lead melted almost instantly and left a gaping hole. Not ideal.

So, out with the Pace iron. It's only rated at 80W but has thermostatic control.

Some of the joints were royally buggered.

There was even one that the original craftsman had missed:

If you look closely you can see the 2 fractures in this joint:

There. Both sides fully resoldered and ready to go back in when the door has been stripped and refinished using Osmo Polyx Tint 3072.

Job done.