Beating Starlink internet with a £10 4G simcard - Off Grid day 47
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2024
- Part 2 • Learning the Hard Way:...
Part 3 • Rural Internet Setup R...
Starlink satelite internet vs 4G LTE
We are experiencing low upload speeds with starlink satellite internet so we are going to assemble our own 4g mast to see if we can beat the speeds of starlink for 1/7th the cost (spoiler we do) We find somewhere to build the mast and explain why we are suited to installing our own 4g mast. The ariels and point to point wifi transmitters we use and why and a speed test showing the comparable internet download and upload speeds of starlink and our 4G simcard router.
3G internet-www.three.co.uk/broadband/hom...
Starlink- www.starlink.com/residential?...
Directional antenna-www.netxl.com/directional-ant...
Point to point wifi-www.broadbandbuyer.com/produc...
Socket set-www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-25-Pi...
Website-www.offgridscotland.co.uk/
Facebook- / offgridscotland
Instagram- / offgridscotland123
00:00 Intro
01:02 Making the anchors
04:31 Why leaving Starlink
10:41 Why 3G is better for us
13:58 The equipment
19:14 Starlink speed test
20:43 Erecting the mast
24:52 The power problem
27:50 3G internet speed test - Jak na to + styl
I deploy 4G connected construction sites in the UK. Done over 600 now. I use the Proroute H685 which you can get from the "3G Router store" in the UK. They are industrial routers and run off 12v, so you could run it off a old car battery. A Directional Yagi antenna was definitely the best way to go in your case.
Good to hear from an expert. I am going to give the router by 'outdoorrouter' a go and see what its like
We use Teltonica RUT250 4G and they’re fine! And I agree use a point to point yagi and make sure you point to the correct cell mast!
P@@dotslashsatan
@@dotslashsatan The RUT units are good and small. I have one in my car and it works great as 12v DC based with quick boot time.
I bought a box of 9 broken Teltonika Rut950s for £50..They all had broken power jacks, easy fix then sold them on for £150 a piece.
We fit these setups weekly all over the place with no physical broadband connections. A MikroTik LHGGM&EG18-EA Dish with a class 18 LTE modem a pair of Ubiquiti LOCO5AC NanoStation's and a Ubiquiti Flex USW 5 Less weight, less kit to be hit by windage plus your router is in the end of the dish with no loss in antenna cables. Bit of armoured cat 5 all the way back to the house and you can power it all via PD POE. Power the Flex 5 port switch via the house then it can provide its own poe for the Nanostation and dish. All runs on 24v.
Great sounds like you know your stuff. I am going to run power up there as its just over 200m and I would need boosters for the POE and when its armoured its not cheap
I love my Litebeam 5ACgen2's - they act as a transparent bridge, but have a bit of windage compared to Nanobeams, depends on the link budget what I fit. if it's very short path but has fresnel obscuration I use the Nano more and rely on scattering around the obstacle. For longer links I use 5ACg2's and aim off a little to get around the fresnel problem. I have very few clear paths due to trees and buildings and almost every one of the clear LOS has nearly half the fresnel obscured. Knife edge cases I use 5ACs for max gain and aim directly at the ridge/edge.
You can have the best most expensive kit but it's no good if it wobbles off in the wind and blows away. Metal fatigue is the eventual killer if it wobbles.
@@offgridscotland Channel just showed up as suggested. Being in the HF field since the 80's the above suggestion is a good one. Coax = loss, but also antenna's are very complex. Those 2 directional antenna's are very close to each other if the image does it justice. The way the antenna makes it's gain is by making the beam smaller, so if aimed wrong then the antenna is worse than a small antenna with no (extra) gain at all. The more gain the more precise it should be.
But you mention 200m. I thought cat5e would only go 100m. POE is at 48V so yes loss is kind of big.
Need to watch the other vids so my text is only related to things I saw here. What if you install the equipment down where you need it? A phone is absolutely no match signal wise than those other devices with a good antenna.
@@offgridscotlandif your going through the effort of running power up there, just run a fiber in addition instead of cat cable. Fibre isn’t really expensive anymore and 200 meters is like nothing when it comes to fiber connections. You couldn’t have any more stable connection then that. Even with 5G in the future.
@@Luke-san At 100M, he may need something in between to regenerate that signal. Though, not sure what Ethernet 100 or 1G will do in terms of packet loss etc at > 100M.
Small note: download and upload speeds are normally measured in mega/giga bits per second (lowercase 'b'). Bits are one eighth of a byte, so with a 50Mbps upload speed, it'd take roughly 8 seconds to upload a 50MB file.
This looks excellent. My parents live in rural Wales, and have struggled with BT broadband speeds for some time. I'm hoping we'll be able to set something like this up for them!
Thanks, I am fairly new to this internet stuff (used to just plug the router in and use it)
@@offgridscotland generally, storage is bytes, networking is bits
perhaps take a look into the Acess Broadband Cymru grant scheme. The government can cover the cost of equipment if eligible.
Brilliant this is what we should be doing, building and working around keeps the grey cells active. Hope you'll call it Bargin Link. Cheers Mick
Thanks Mick! It was really satisfying to see it was faster than the starlink
@@offgridscotland it's a punching the air above your head moment. Well done that man.
17:30 - as a radio amateur, and seeing that you have LOS to the tower, I can already foresee problems with signal overloading (we call it desense) try again, but point the antennae in the OPPOSITE direction to the mast. A Yagi antenna like you have there has the active element at the back, and the passive directors in front simply 'concentrate the signal in one direction. Facing it in the opposite direction exposes the active elements only to the transmitter mast and will lower the input signal to the router telling you if it's actually an overload problem. You can liken it to someone standing on the opposite side of a room talking quietly and you can't hear them. If they shout, you can hear them. But if they stand next to you and shout, it's too loud. You may well find that you have a good setup, but just too much input. The only other thing to say is the mast is totally inadequate for the load. The guy lines are good, but the final section with the Yagis on have no support other than the sleeved section and will quickly fail. Honestly, if you get good reception with the back lobe of the antennas, then just swap to a smaller patch style antenna (the box you describe: Poynting make good kit for this) - I'm sorry to say I'm a proper nerd for this kinda thing :)
The multi element antennas look like log period antennas. How are they connected. The cable lengths are critical for max received signal. As you explained one is vertical and one is horizontal polarised. You may find just one antenna slant polarised (i.e. 45 degrees) works quite OK - might be worth a try? If so it would reduce the wind loading of the pole, which by the looks for Line of Sight in both directions only needs at that location to be just above grass height! 😊
Wow that's a lot of excellent information. Yea I was expecting a better pole as the website said they were 2.4m long not 3 shorter lengths slotting together to make 2.4m. I will try your idea on reversing them and see what it does. Thank you very much!
@@bevmarks9921 Agree, one antenna likely best, joining the antennas directly will cause losses. Getting an amatueur radio licence would be an exellent idea for basic tech knowlege and also for comms, and its fun 🙂
Have a look at HRCC ham radio crash course www.youtube.com/@HamRadioCrashCourse,
and Calum in the UK (DX commander) www.youtube.com/@DXCommanderHQ
@@offgridscotland I couldn't find tech spec for the outdoorrouter but this will be a MiMo router meaning multi in Multi Out. In simple terms the when you make a data connection the mast will tell the router where to receive data.Your router will be capable of receiving and transmitting on multiple frequencies simultaneously (hence more than one aerial) and it combines these to make one big internet pipe, this is why when the mast has lots of user traffic your data speed will drop as it can't offer you multiple frequencies (for the geeks out there search "carrier aggregation" then search again and add the word "categories" this will explain how it works) . If you can access the menu of the router look for signal strength and signal quality these should / would be shown as RSRQ & RSRP and you can see what quality your signal is if you compare the reading to a chart like this. Search "Outdoor-4G-Router-Mobile-Signal-Quality-Chart-1400x421.png" You can then work out if your are looking at the best mast and turn the antenna to obtain the best signal quality. If you find your signal is low you could cut the antenna cables down in length as they will have a huge loss as mobile phone frequencies.
I'd suggest given the size that those LTE antennas have far more gain than is necessary. Especially given the tower is LOS, relatively close and you saw better results with a standalone mobile phone. Try using the antennas built into the 4G router - you may see better results. I'd also recommend running your speed test with an ethernet cable between your laptop and router rather than over WiFi. Best of luck!
Thanks, I had considered that but the Mac doesn't have an ethernet port and I had already run back down to get the usb adapter. I will try the Ethernet next time I am up there
I was about to say have you enabled the external antenna. On the few I've had you had to tell it to use the external or some can do one external and one internal.
cables the way to go, but the location look like the middle nowhere, so channel congestion should be problem, moving as much as posable up the hill, basicly setup repeater, make the final connection?
Looks more like the router is on band 28 (results are similar to the 10 MHz of B20 that I have here) and not aggregating B1/3.
@@offgridscotland you can use any old router at the house end of the ethernet cable to put out wifi to your Mac
Just checked the masts around my area and see that I have LOS. After testing a few spots, it’s up to 4x faster than my current spot.
Thanks for inspiring me to research, I might make a wall mounted receiver with just a direct line into my house!
Great! I am so glad you had a look, it wasnt until I decided to have a go that I realised it was faster
Enjoying all the views of your countryside - thanks for sharing !
Off-grid is challenging, but it can be done. Best of luck to you folks. :)
I was watching mostly for the scenery, and listening to you talk about the 3G and 4G stuff.
Watching you build in high speed is quite a trip - and It's all good! :)
Thanks! I speed some of it up otherwise the videos would be so long! Glad to have you here
Another great video… we appreciate your efforts. Quality entertainment and great info
Thanks Stewart!
Love the improvised hammer. Great video.
Thanks 👍
I know you said you didn't want cables but could you look at power over ethernet (PoE) would remove the latency between beaming signal between the mast and caravan and then also send power back up to router on hill. PoE+ gives 30w and can go bigger with other standards
That's way too far for a POE run.
I had considered that but I will need armoured or ducted cable as there are so many field mice and voles here that they will chew through it in days if its just normal ethernet
You might try a passive repeater.
Three of your beam aerials, one pointing at the cell tower, connected directly to one pointed at the house, then at the house one pointed too your field mast. No power required. I have a friend on Mull that used this technique technique to get TV to his house and it worked well. Worth trying before you spend money money on cables etc. I don't think your small hydro will work, the system will need a good mass flow with the low pressure of a stream. Your water generation system will be more complex than you think.
Thats a great idea and I would like to have a go with a passive system as it sounds like the best way. I agree on the power I already have the cable arriving because I am not sure remote renewables will be reliable enough and I dont want the internet to go down too often
I don't really know the layout of your property close to where your current house is, but with those high gain antennas even a few hundred ft away from your current house and pointing towards the tower, you should be able to get a an almost as equal signal as you would get up on the hill. As long as the other Hill that is up beside your house is not in the way too much cell phone frequencies are pretty good at penetrating a little bit of dirt, so even if you are skimming the edge of the hill. If the antennas are down by your house, you'll still get a pretty good signal with those big antennas
I had hoped I would but there are two rows of very high spruce trees blocking the way to the main pylon and I wasnt too sure if they would mess the signal up. I am planning on doing some tests in the next video to see what affect everything has on the signal.
@@offgridscotlandyou might even find the tops of the trees enhance the signal by refraction if you are very very lucky lol, but the trouble is trees move in the wind and also grow which might make the signal unreliable.
At work in the olden days we used to use passive reflectors , basically two back to back microwave dishes . One picked up the signal at the top of the hill and the other rebroadcast it down the hil. No power used, just a cable connecting the two , just passive.
They are frowned upon now commercially as they also redirect any signal ( i.e interference) in the same band in both directions, making radio planning complicated.
Given the forward (direction you're pointing in) gain of the receive aerials you may be able to do the whole thing passively, without power. Use one of your receive aerials to point to the distant mast. Use the other to point to your property. Connect the two together with a single co-ax. You will have to get the lead length correct. At your property you should then find your phones work with a much higher signal level, and therefore faster speeds. As for the dual polarisation, using a H and V polarised aerial, try rotating the receive Ariel through 45 deg relative to the horizon. Its at least worth a try as it is free and power free. Passive re-radiators are used throughout Wales & Scotland for TV and radio services to fill in reception holes caused by hills and valleys.
Thats such a good idea! I will give it a try in the next video to see how it works
Of course the authorities may have something to say about that. The offence is "stealing electricity", believe it or not. Although the only case I heard of was a guy with a bedstead antennae in his Norwood attic charging batteries off Crystal Palace. That was so bad viewers in the hollow ground behind lost their TV!.
@@LouiseBrooksBobnot quite. You are basically making an unregulated interference device that doesn't have any RF filters in it so it's picking up and redirecting any and all signals from all channels in its line of sight. An active 4G repeater will have selective filtering I would guess but I'm not an expert in active 4G repeaters.
For a more stable mast you could use aluminium truss, normally used for rigging lighting or speakers for concert halls. There's a plethora of mounting accessories and it won't rust.
Thats a great idea, I have got a scaffold pole that I will be using in the next video so hopefully that will be a bit better
Personally, I would not bother with Antanas as the mast is so close you will probably get good speeds without it. As well the internal aerial inside the Three 4G plus router supports different polarization while the external antenna ports do not. Polarization is the angle the radio signal is travelling, think of 3D glasses. I've also checked the mains adaptor for the Three Plus rougher which is 12v DC, so could be wired to an old car battery.
Thanks! We are going to do a bit more testing in the next video including with and without the antennas and see what diffferences we get
I think You should get a proper mast where your house will be and point the directional antenna to the BTS mast, no power issues and signal straight from 4G router without sending it to house.
Regards Richard from Southampton UK 🇬🇧
Thanks, I may well end up arriving at that conclusion. We are going to do a bit more testing in the next video so we will see if its worth the effort up the hill
Really really interesting video looking forward to the next update on this .
thank you very much
Great job, well considered. An ebike hub motor is handy for a little water generator. I noticed you have worked on a solution there I will check the vid out, dont forget to keep you battery warm in winter as the cold sucks it empty fast and vented in summer as thermal throttling can be a pain to. I will have a ponder on your solution and give you a shout if anything comes to mind 🙂
Thank you very much, I have since decided to run the power cable as there are a few other potential failure points and I don't want to also have to deal with power outages as another one
@@offgridscotland It happens, having the wired peace of mind sounds good, while at the same time you can still dabble with the hydro gen, that would be handy over time and once you nail the solution it could be handy for other bits to.
I would consider renting an RF Signal meter or a Spectrum analyzer for maximum signal gain/best reception on your two antennae.
I haddnt heard of one of those so I will have a look and see if I can get hold of one
If you were getting 50 up and 200 down from a phone, which has a tiny omnidirectional antenna, I’d be tempted to just use a decent omnidirectional antenna. Good video, very informative, thank you.
Thanks! I have a slightly different set up for the next video after reading all the great suggestions here so we will see how that goes
Would recommend the router you mentioned for use in a touring caravan with an omni directional aerial ?
Put the cable in the ground, looks mainly like gras land down to the house.
If there is no stone's in the ground you can easily put the cable 5 cm deep with making a «cut» trench with a showel.
I manage a 70m run in a couple of hours on farmland.
Wow you are doing amazingly if you do that run by hand. I have conceded though and have the cable on order for the next video
Can also borrow a tractor with mole plough, have pulled many cables and water pipes with that setup
Nice setup there, i have been using 4g from home for a few years and recently upgraded to 5g. One thing i have learned is that router specs are really important, using a 4g router cat18 gave me full 150/160 down and 50/60 up with direct line of sight to the tower while the one supplied by the company was only like cat6 so upload specially was pretty limited. Now 5g is a different beast with latency rivaling fiber and 300/400 mbps download, but uploads appear to use the 4g bands since max is still around 50mbps
thats so useful especially as I am working through those problems at the moment
My family and I lived on a solar sailboat I made for 2 years. your going to hit the limit in just a few days. star link is amasing
Wow thats incredible that you lived on a sailboat and made it work for 2 years nice job!
Those TP-Link dishes can work fine (I used one in my back garden to beam wifi into a cabin) but I have found them to be occasionally troublesome. The software (Pharos I think it’s called) is quite technical. Best of luck with it though!!
Ah ok, these came preconfigured so I hope they arent too much of a pain to get set up.
Watching this video takes me back to the eighties, early nineties. I was in the Signals Territorials. Our specific task (after a nuclear war) was to do basically what you are doing. That is, go to the highest peaks in every county, from Scotland to London and set up VHF voice/data relay stations. One antenna pointed to the previous antenna and one pointed to the next in the chain, and so on.
If you were thinking of taking power up there. A 6A circuit, over that distance, would require a 10mm two core armoured cable to comply with volt drop. So about £800+ for the cable alone.
Wow that sounds like quite a task to be preparing to do! Thanks I have run a small armoured cable uo there and it seems ok for now. I dont think I will quite need 6A
I would try the setup down at the caravan, no messing about. Those yagi antennas will be fine down there, get hold of a vna so you can properly tune your antennas and cable. I think you will loose far more with the wifi than you will with those trees on the 4g, wifi drops fast at legal power levels even at line of sight
Thanks others have said the same. I think in the next video we will try some different locations to see how it all ends up comparing
Hi, i'm not sure about that particular model but you may you have to log into your 4g modem and manually enable your external aerials. Default would be just the internal aerials. Good luck!
I have been trying that today for the next video and having a right problem with it. There seems to be no clear option and others say the same on this router. I have another one that I will be trying out once the adapters arrive
Great video Mobile broadband varies wildly depends on how many other connections there are to the cell as your finding in the video consecutive tests produce different results. Sometimes I get a burst of 70 megabits but after a few seconds settles to about 20-30 megabits/sec. ps. A megabit is speed, a megabyte is size
Thanks I always get my words muddled. Cant promise I will remember on the next video though. Its going to be really interesting actually living with it as its all ok when you are filming a video but when it doesnt work at the worst possible time it shows how good the system really is
Hey this isn’t true a megabit and a megabyte are both units of data the only difference is a megabyte is bigger (more data) than a megabit
Megabit is just often used to show transfer speed because “bigger number looks better”
You clearly don't know anything about the internet or tech, try not to spread misinformation...
Be careful what you state as fact because not many of us ever took puter schooling so can get confusing :D I think 8 bits makes 1 Byte, so to convert backwards get bits (Bytes/8=bits). Ok right about here is when we start realizing that I haven't read anything about computer science and bad maths very much, I'm just a power amatuer netnerd, I went mega nerd and started dating a girl in the SMALL like
18:25 a middle man mast is just called a signal repeater, in Alaska we have repeaters mtn to mtn and then directional signal throwers from there branched off to hit main city the repeaters connect to rack other mainly as a wireless data trunk cable with long thick cables cost and digging or infrastructure upkeep problems ocean trunk wires though do do very well sending alot of information securely to each other
Aha thats what I was looking for a signal repeater. Wow thats a good way of getting the network across difficult terrain
Just brought a clark mast qt-15 meter jobbie, mint condition for 2006 build with tripod & middle & top guying gear. Got major boost in speed though using omni-directional antenna. Oh & a ZT-11mtr for a wind turbine at some stage too be mounted to a lorry project.
Make sure to login into router advanced settings; activate external ariel ports!
The wind turbine sounds amazing! and that is a tall mast mine is barely above my head!
I hunted for the setting but couldnt find it on the router. I have got a different one for the next video
Looking at your yagi antennas couldn't work out if you had done this, but, might be a good test if you orientated one 45deg to horizontal and other 135deg, to cater for wave polarisation? Mimic a mimo antenna?? Sorry if that was the case, couldn't see from the video
I have a slightly different setup planned for the next video to do some testing with
To power:
Get a small travel inverter and a couple of small solar panels, and a small 12v lithium ion battery. Put the battery and inverter in a sealed plastic box and partially bury.
Morten at Myplayhouse set up something similar in Portugal.
Your point to point wifi should be fine if you use good kit.
Portugal doesn't experience freezing Scottish winters, and Lithium Ion are destroyed below freezing (I have an E-MTB and live in the Cairngorms, never leave the battery on the bike in the shed!)
Inverters are very inefficient. Best to stay DC throughout and use boost / buck converters as required.
Excellent thank you. I will check their video out and see if I can pick anything up from what they have done
Hi your video came up as recommended today so late to the comments I was going to say the same, to look at the Myplayhouse Portugal. Video Morten has done several, including power. As for the Lithium Ion Battery Low-temperature problem I have seen this with a Power station going in to “Safe mode” at 0 C and refusing to charge Get a normal Lead Acid Battery for a cold location look for “Ultra Deep Cycle Leisure Marine Battery - 12V / 105Ah” it will have a shorter life but will work in the cold and set your charge controller to Lead Acid.
Sodium batteries are better in cold climates and will likely replace lead acid batteries.
I added a WeBoost kit to the house for telephone and as a back-up when the power is off. It's 5G once in a while. The point is WeBoost said to separate the in and out antenna as far as possible to limit interference. I use a 1000 W power hub (Jackery) for total blackout. Starlink draws 72 Watts. (110V AC) Toaster draws 690W. Then the sun comes up and power comes on. High desert helps as I get sun nearly every day. 24 Panels 16 batteries. Power only goes out when I get sloppy. A mate of mine used to run high voltage DC for sunlight challenged clients. Some were hundreds of feet. High voltage = smaller copper wire. He is no longer here to ask about it. Main point of this is antenna separation. Carry on sir.
Thank you very much your system sounds amazing! I agree with what you said about the power only goes off if you get sloppy. As soon as I take my eye off the ball thats when something clogs or runns out.
Very interesting video thanks
Thanks
19:50 'the uploads have always been pretty good...'. I think you meant downloads. And if the Starlink 'degrades quite quickly with cloud'... you are in Scotland. Subscribed, as my future will be off-grid.
Thanks, I did mean downloads. Hope you like the rest of our videos
I lived in a caravan in rural Galloway for two years about 2014 ish, I had a satellite setup I forget the name of the company. It was about 300ish for the dish and router. I mounted the dish on a paving slab, which was enough to keep it from moving about but still light enough to be portable. Dish was huge, the system worked very well for the most part, it could struggle with heavy cloud but was better than I expected. I still have the dish, I have no idea if the companies still exist but it might be an alternative to starlink. I suspect the 4g option is the better bet, especially with electronic sims now, you can have a collection of payg accounts and turn on the one with best reception in the area.
I am looking forward to doing the next video because I will be trying out different configurations and locations to see what differences they make. Yours sounds like it worked well and we find heavy cloud can clog things up but it makes it far worse for Starlink than beraming to a ground based mast.
Have you thought about a passive antennas solution? Wire the two log periodic antennas together, point one at source and one towards destination...
no I haven' but now that you have mentioned it to me I will look into it. Thanks!
This is unlikely to give a good result unless you are seeing signals better than about -40dBm on the hilltop. The losses of a back to back antennas are too high. One slightly expensive option is to put the antennas about 20m apart pointing in the two directions and use a cell enhancer to boost the signal, you don't need much power and it would give full cellular coverage by the house :)
Run the power cable! For the distance is a no brainer. Every other option is far more complex and you will regret it every time you are up that hill fixing it!
Buy 2 core 1.5mm armoured. Put a DC power supply at the house end which suits the voltage required by the kit (prob 24v). Use a decent AC-DC PSU like Meanwell, you can adjust these to account for voltage drop.
Done the above myself on a run over 300m. Ran fibre alongside to eliminate the wireless link.
You could also do this over a network cable using PoE repeaters. See "Mikrotik GPeR" devices
Spot on.... Argyll isn't as cold as where I'm at in the Cairngorms but freezing will happen and the hydro or solar/battery system may suffer badly....cable power for sure and fibre if you can afford to go to that also. I'd also be concreting in a scaffold pole for the mast and tethering it as you did, you'll get howling wind up there and if it's just sunk into soft peat it'll move/rotate. Belt'n'braces every time in rural Scotland!! Damn impressed with those 4G speeds- our "copper wire" only gives 17mbps d/l and 1.5mbps u/l We have just the "band 20" antenna over the valley might see what the phone picks up and whether a sim router would be worthwhile- faster speeds with a trade off of maybe a capped monthly usage....
I am beginning to consider this option more seriously now that I am having to actually do the job
I did WiFi over 4 miles many years ago weather will be your fun. Get an old telegraph pole concreted in that will give you plenty of height and you can put ladder up it. Will also be more stable than thin poles. I have a 15 ft scaffold concreted in at my land for point to point WiFi but it waves in the wind.
over 4 miles! wow thats amazing
@@offgridscotland I use these on my land for wifi point to point. good for up to 15 miles.
www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-300Mbps-dual-polarized-directional-CPE510/dp/B00N2RO63U/ref=asc_df_B00N2RO63U?tag=bingshoppinga-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80126967116315&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583726542934584&psc=1
All tests should be run over Ethernet as you need to isolate the WiFi element so that you are only testing the 4G element, now of course having drunk the apple coolaid you won't be able to do this without purchasing what should be standard spec, an Ethernet adapter.
Thanks, I will be trying this on the next video as it will likely be a test of most of the comparrisons to see where the weakesses are.
I used a long length of (galvanised) scaffold pole on my setup which gets it's signal from about 6-7 miles away. your little mast is a bit flimsy for those yagi antennae. You're fortunate to have a 4G signal. we didn't get a signal till a couple of years ago, and relied on (also expensive, but also data limited) satellite connection.
I have got a scaffold pole for the next video as you are right its too small
The angles is for polarisation but you might need to check if its 45° offset or if its just horizontal and vertical
Aha ok thanks for the tip
27:00 20W seems way more than should be needed. I think look out for more power efficient hardware and go with a small solar cell. For the meantime you can use it with a small solar cell while the sun is shining.
Thanks, I have understood as much from the comments so far. I will be changing out those antennas to smaller ones that come with a different router and I plan on running a single power lead up to the location as I dont think I want any unreliability that might come from remote renewables. I will also be doing a speed test in the next video to see what difference the location makes
interesting and nice video.. and the face slap was quite nice also ;)
Thanks, it made me laugh watching it back so I left it in
Although you are probably over-modulating the signal, a pole option you should try is a scaffolding put lock pole, about 1m high, 2 x swivel couplers and a 4m pole, you post hammer the 1m into the ground leaving half protruding, fasten the 4m to a swivel coupler at the bottom of both poles and raise up right and couple the top, this way you have a none climb serviceable mast. no guides are required.
Thanks! It was annoying the pole was so thin when it arrived.
I use a Three 4G Plus roughter unlocked off ebay for £35, paired with a promotional £10 Unlimated data Lebara Sim card. Even though I lives in a town with broadband, I find this setup cheaper and fast enough for my needs.
Excellent great setup!
The big thing with LTE setups is having a Cat 18/20 level radio (an M.2 one) with your Yaggie array weather it be 2/4/6/8 antennas, LTE setups with a dedicated mini PC and radio with IPEX to SMA to BNC/TNC adapters are far better then the consumer router setups (can run add blocking on the network level too) also you can run it all off standard 12v etc so a small solar setup can work all year round for a affixed station.
I am stuck on VDSL2 with a 2-3k cost to update to Fibre so I wasted a few weeks on this as a project just did not have the money or time to get scaffolding up to deploy antennas properly.
Thanks for the tip. Wow thats a lot of money for the updated cable!
@@offgridscotland No its not the Fibre I have trenched and got media coverters setup for my shed, thats like 20GBP for the two 1Gbps end points for Ethernet hardware running off 5v and £15 per 50m of LC fibre, in the real world its all all LABOR costs that makes BT wholesale flat priceing brackets insane there consumer site is only for people with fibre to the local pots, but as soon as you go look at the wholesale for "FTTC to FTTP" its pure pain in city and in most semi rural locations.
Just as an FYI, you might find that the wind loading on that system is pretty high for Scottish wind. I base that on 40 years experience installing amateur radio antenna systems in Scotland. It's the gusting that does the damage. Normally a bit of "give" can be helpful, but not with directional antennas. There would be nothing worse than a failure in deep winter when it's difficult to get up and fix it.
Thanks I have already got a scaffold pole for it as it was way thinner than I expected it to be when I ordered it
Hey mate, have you enabled the external Antenna in the router settings? Normally, these Antenna ports will not be active if not activated. If that is true, your speeds will increase dramatically ;)
These routers normally have an IP address on the Back to configure them.
And if you run Power from your House across a 200-meter Cable, you should look up the proper Cable Size that you don't end up with too much power loss :)
Wow that would be amaxing if I had missed that and our speeds go up. I haddnt changed anything so we will try it in the next video
Thank you, keep working.
👍
@@offgridscotland My long reply seems to have been scrubbed for mentioning a site to get parts from.
Maybe this has been asked before, but are the electricity lines passing through the property suitable to take a grid connection off? Or maybe you've done the math and micro hydro is a better long term investment? Thanks!
Yea they are available and probably way cheaper to connect to than what we have done. We chose to go off grid rather than on gird. Funny thing here is that the main grid goes down all the time and we are the only ones in the glen with power. The technicians come out at least once a month to check the lines and are very surprised to see we have power.
Same in the Philippines the Kit is very expensive compared in some countries like Germany or Italy and they say it was 30-40% the price and the Billing system is ----
Wow its a shame its more expensive
@@offgridscotland yes because local telcos here are pretty much business oriented rather than a public service. So starlink will definitely in line with them😥
A tall tower at the homebase with those two yagi's will work without creating any power problems in a field.
Thanks, we are surrounded by very tall pine trees do you think it will work through those?
@@offgridscotlandyup it should work just fine. I'd do a small test at the house
Good job.
Thanks!
A Zyxel modem/panel antenna is a very robust all-in-one outdoor router with around 13dB gain and Cat 18 receiver. Can get up to 600Mbps if the base has the backhaul capacity. Here in remote Wester Ross I can get 130Mbps at a site that has pretty weak ordinary cellphone service.
Thanks! your speeds are amazing
I'm wondering if there is a passive unpowered antenna setup which could redirect and passively repeat the signal? If so, you could avoid having to setup a power station on the hill. Two high gain antennae joined by coaxial cable. One pointed at the tower, and the other one pointed at the house window. Might work.
I was hoping this existed as well but so far havent found anything. Most of the people seem to say 'just run the power cable' and the more I look into it its feeling like the best option
@@offgridscotland I think this kind of thing would be a niche application and is probably just a diy project. Maybe find a book on antennae systems and RF applications. It's probably simple once you have the right kit, but I've never played with antennae. It should work though if the power level of the signal is adequate. If powered, I'd also run AC from a hardened location so the thing works in Cold temps. Anything with a battery on the hill would become problematic in winter.
@@Building_Bluebird Yea I think I will be introducing many potential problems adding batteries up the hill.
Old RF tech here. We used to do that back in the 70's for Band III TV and it worked well. Two high gain yagis joined with a fixed length of coax, length was a few wavelengths at the desired channel frequency. It was also very high grade coax like RG213
There have been examples of radio mirrors used in the past, but they're not ideal, usually you need the mast to have a directional antenna pointed at the mirror.
29:05 what did you expect in that area? The network in this rural areas is running on cat4 tech and I would guess it uses 800Mhz band with 5Mhz channel width. Forget about channel bundling. That is used in cities with high coverage.
I would forget about channel bundling but I have no idea what it is. I will just have to hope that what we do in the next video gets us a stable setup
All RF signals travel in straight lines (although very slightly pulled from gravity), they don't twist or change, but you may however also receive reflections of the original wave. The RF wave will come at you at the polisation it was transmitted at, so you don't need both a vertical and horizontal antenna; do recommend watching the signal gain and twisting for ultimate results.
I was wondering about that after reading a lot of the comments. I thought I was barking up the wrong tree with directional antennas as I thought maybe I have got it wrong that the signals were being emitted in a straight line and maybe I should be trying to capture them from any old place
Awesome defender 😊
Thanks Its growing on me a lot. Just have to get it back on the road
You have a better speed than i do on BT Fibre at the moment. They fixed for about an hour and down to sloooow again!
Wow thats good to hear!
@@offgridscotland for you ;)
I’ve only spent a couple of weeks in Scotland in my life, but I know it’s a tad cool up there, so here’s the question: do you get freezing rain? If so, ice is going to build up on those yagis, and the weight of the ice will bend and/or destroy them. First hand experience, though not in Scotland.
I hadn't considered that! we have slightly different ones to test in the next video and they look like they might be a bit more resistant to that
Ive just seen this video in my recommend. The only thing id add is to check what 4G bands you have access to on your sim. Not sure what network you are using but I know some sub networks of big providers will restrict what 4G bands you have access to. This can also apply if a sim is PAYG and not on a contract
Thanks I haddnt checked that part so I will have to have a look
Did you get a better pole? I think the flex will really interfere with your connection on your network.?
I have a scaffold pole for the next one as you said that one moves around
Personally I have a similar setup for a remote cctv system. I'm using a solar panel with charge controller and also a car battery which seems to run it lovely! These routers are generally 12v which of course works well with those routers
I had thought about remote CCTV as a similar thing to power, I have since bit the bullet and bought the cable as I dont want there to be failures in the system all the time because I diddnt get enough solar up there for cloudy days etc
If you are considering running a cable instead of your point to point . You could power your modem via POE ( Power Over Ethernet ) . That being said how is the modem ( ok router ) going to cope in the colder / harsher conditions? You may need to enclose a resistor to act as a heater . Which of course is more power burden although doable. The only other option is high grade coax which lets all the electronics be closer to the home. This puts the coax in the “ expensive “ bracket . Finally you could compromise and enclose the router near the hydro source and if necessary run two turbines . So many permutations but all good fun
this is more than 100m, an ethernet cable will not work well, especially with POE.
I had priced this up but I am not sure if i coulf POE both the wifi dish and the router together. Also the price over the distance was too much given the boosters I would need. I have got some power cable though as that was cheaper than I thought
Thanks
At just 10 quid per "line" perhaps you could get 2 SIMs and then bond the lines together using Multilink PPP or similar? You'd double the bandwidth while still coming in at less than Starlink. Not sure if your gear can do it but its worth a look?
That's an incredible idea! Might be a bit above my skill level however maybe a few more months at this and I might be ready for a more complex set up
My directional antenna(1) is about 1 foot long, and the same shape you are using. I don't have a direct line of sight and I pick up pretty far away. You might have a little over kill on your antennas
I have found that out on the video I am currently working on and we end up with a far simpler system
We live off grid in Scotland too. Can’t believe I’ve only just found your channel! Generate all our own electricity using wind/pv. We’ve gone the other way to you and ditched 4g for Starlink! Problem we had relying on a single mast was the frequent drop outs, sometimes for hours. Not sure if it was just this mast in particular or if they’re all like that and most people don’t notice because they have several masts their devices switch between?
The dropouts played havoc with our WiFi heating controls and various other smart switches we have to harvest as much power as we can when batteries are full.
Going to watch all your other vids now! Good luck, it’s a constant challenge but worth it 😊
Have you? You must be in a really good area for it, I think the trees and hillsides are really bad for starlink here. Thanks I hope you like the other videos
I have a similar problem with out Scottish self build. There is no line of sight to the mast which is over the hill. I'm hoping to find a passive repeater solution but don't know what im doing😅. Wish I knew more about these things.
We are going to do a bit of a series on this as there have been so many comments with different suggestions and I am like you so hopefully we can learn together! I will be trying different configurations and non line of sight options so hopefully some of it will be useful to you
With those high-gain antennas, you don't necessarily need a line of sight to achieve a strong, stable signal. Mounting them directly on the house can save you both the cost and hassle of running power to your mast.
I've installed hundreds of Yagis in rural areas where there was no signal at all using just a regular phone.
Before investing a lot of time, effort, and money, try mounting the antennas down at the house. Additionally, if there are hills in the opposite direction of the tower, they can act as reflectors, as radio waves bounce off hills.
You might also want to check if it's possible to lock the router to a specific band/frequency, as in areas like this, the 800MHz (band 20) or 900MHz (band 8) tend to perform better than 1800MHz (band 3) and 2100MHz (band 1). Some routers allow you to choose the band in the firmware, while others are set to auto. If the router is connected to a too high frequency, the upload speed is the first to suffer. If band selection isn't possible in the firmware, you can connect a band-pass filter between the antenna and the router.
It seems like you have the version with a 7m coaxial cable. The signal loss for the cable is approximately -0.50dB/m. By shortening the cable length, you can gain around 3.5dB.
If you decide to proceed with your mast, consider making it more sturdy, and think about spacing the Yagis a bit. There should ideally be a minimum of 1 meter between them. One should be mounted horizontally and the other vertically. If you have line of sight and the sector antennas on the tower are facing you, you might experience issues due to excessive RF signal. In that case, you can connect an attenuator between the router and the antenna.
I haddnt considered the hill acting as a reflector. I have got a different router to try for the next video and it seems a bit more suited for our purpose. We will be doing a few more comparrisons of locations and antenna so hopefully we will discover a good combination. You certainly sound like you know your stuff so I will check back to re-read it before I make the changes thank you very much
My Play House on YT that has done exactly this and powered the mast with solar and a lithium battery. Admittedly that is in Portugal.
Thanks I will check out their video and see if there are any tips I can pick up
What engine is in your defender?
On the 200tdi and 300tdi you can get an upgraded turbo
its the 300tdi, I did consider the hybrid turbo but at the moment I just want it running. It was from Fox turbo though and it was all new rather than refurbished.
@@offgridscotland 300tdi is one of the most reliable engines, mine is the 200tdi
A garrett turbo off a Bmw m57 engine fits and gives lots more power….
Did you try the reception with the yagi antennas straight from the top of the barn?
Otherwise, run the cables. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life messing around with this install. 😉
I haddnt but I will for the next video I have bit the bullet for the next video and purchased the cable so that we have the flexibility for the future in case we need to change anything. Plus it gives me a power point up the hill for other things if i need it.
1:30 I envy your granite hammering block. It looks rather gneiss.
Thanks!
Hello, the LTE Modem/Router is not weather proof, so in a final setup I'd recommend placing it inside one of those metal or plastic hermetic enclosure used in networking like this.
Thanks! I have got a different one (two actually) to test in the next video and they are both outdoor rated.
Directional antennas are very very picky with angle I’ve found…1mm off axis and speed can drop by a 1/4. I’ve set one up 4miles from mast 4g and get 80 down and 40up. Phone line was 2.
I was wondering how much of a difference small angles would affect it
This was a bit longer one 🤠
The speed you get is also a whole lot dependent on the hardware you are running. A slow router, access point etc will slow you down quite a bit even if you have high speed over satellite or 4G+
I live remote, but not as remote as you, I am lucky enough to have fiber, but it is expensive. I pay 70£ a month for measly 150/150.
Have been considering 5G as I am supposed to have good coverage with one provider here, only I am worried about is latency, up-time and data caps.
My fiber is caped at 150/150, but latency is low and data is unlimited. Could also get 1000/1000 if I wanted to pay for it, but don't need that!
Are you happy with your two hydro intake or are you considering redesigning them?
The inverter you got, was it by default able to tweek the power points of the MPPT or did you have to reach out to the manufacturer and ask for that feature?
That is an expensive internet but at least you are getting good speeds for it. I have heard that some 5G services are really 4G repackaged but if you have fibre where you are it's probably the real deal.
I think I am going to add a swirl pot after the filters as they are doing fine but I need to get the silt out and people have told me if you create a cyclone it collects in the centre and the clean water comes out the side.
Yes it was on by default and easily accessible so you don't even need to unlock it with the installer code.
Do you get a connection to the 4g without the poll etc at the house?
A very weak one I tried and its surrounded by trees, so the good signal is up the hill
I would rotate the internet receive antennas and see if you can improve on the speed. Maybe configure 1 for horizontal and the other vertical, move them around and test until you get the best throughput. When testing internet speed on your laptop, plug in a UTP cable to make sure you have the best connectivity. Then line up your wifi PtP and test in a similar way using signal strength. Good luck, look forward to seeing the power solution.
Thanks, I have understood as much from the comments so far. I will be changing out those antennas to smaller ones that come with a different router and I plan on running a single power lead up to the location as I dont think I want any unreliability that might come from remote renewables.
@@offgridscotland I would only swap one of those internet receive antennas to check if a smaller antenna can still receive at the same/similar signal strength. You may only need a single receive antenna. For the power side, perhaps a single solar panel and a decent battery will be enough to run a small receive router + the wifi transmit dish. Need to calculate the power draw then work out what power solution will work for several days taking into account weather conditions.
i think you can supply seperate inverters to the same bat bank , the inverters should have reverse current diodes fitted
Yea I think so too, not at that stage just yet but I was planning on having one battery bank and other inverters if needed
Off the wall answer possibly large parabolic dish to reflect signal down the glen ?? or more sensible large solar panels
TradeSparky £67 new 415watts x 2, a solar charge controller prob lead acid battery (prefer lithium but heated battery ££ )
should do even overcast days , but i agree with other posts simplest but not liked by you understandably cable , but prob need
to run AC re voltage drop , POE sounds good but looks like a fair distance. Thanks for video .
Thanks, I think I will be going with the cable as I really dont want the internet dropping out becomming a regular task to fix
To get more throughput or data rates, you will want to use MIMO. For this, you will need an LTE radio that supports it (most radios support at least 2x2 or even 4x4 MIMO). Most smartphones today support 4x4 MIMO, so most standalone LTE modems should also support it. In theory, a 4x4 MIMO configuration will use 4 transmit and 4 receive antennas, and it will multiplex the 4 streams to provide you a higher speed. Your maximum speed will also depend on the carrier bandwidth the network operator is using and the number of users using the same tower. Other mechanisms in LTE like carrier aggregation can help you get even faster throughput, but it depends on both the network provider and your equipment capabilities. 100 Mbps is not bad, but you could get 3x that speed.
That sounds excellent, I just had to do a bit of googling to find out what MIMO is and it sounds perfect!
Very cool project! …Maybe you can get modem with basic TV channels included for the almost same price with mobile home broadband now as well?! (That seems to be where home broadband over 4g/5g is heading now in Europe.)
Btw don’t forget some ground / protection of your investment against lightning⚡️🌩️⛈️
Thank you for an interesting video!😊
Thanks for the tip I haddnt considered lightning but it is in the prime spot for a strike!
Did you change the router settings to 'use external antennas' ?
No I diddnt, imagine if that wasnt set! I will check it for the next video thanks for pointing it out
👍
That area has a ton of masts on the EE network compared to Three. You might be able to get a stronger signal off EE from a closer distance to your hut.
Also you mention "3G" when its "4G" just to point that out.
Sorry I had seen the title was 3G and I changed it to 4G. I think I had 3 the provider in my head when saying it. My wife is on EE so we will see if they have as cheap a plan
@@offgridscotland Ahh sounds good, Three is very good for budget but in your location it seems to be EE has wayy over double the amount of masts in the area.
Similar situation in NZ. However, about 10km not LOS off-grid - down far end of a twisty valley. We got occasional 1 bar of 3/4g on phone presumably bouncing off hills. To my pleasant surprise an MR600 4G router gets pretty reliable signal 1-3bars, no extra antennas. If your wife’s phone gets good signal, a decent mobile router should do even better, even without antennas. I’ve got Starlink kit ready too, but uses quite a bit of off-grid power in comparison. Ive got Starlink at my on-grid home too and it’s great! However, Starlink router not great so Ethernet about 2x the speed! To test fairly, use Ethernet or ‘advance speed test’ in phone app. Doing a PC test like you did tests the WiFi and laptop as much as Starlink. Starlinks new half-price ‘deprioritised’ service is great, if in UK yet. Have you tried 4G router in locations at your house? May pick up bounced signals from hills etc, or consider an MR600 perhaps -seems a popular off-grid router, though yours looks good too.
Thanks, I will be doing a bit more testing in the next video to see what the signal is like elsewhere. Good to hear about your system
If youre running power to it then consider PoE (power over ethernet), issue is that cat6 can only do 100m, so youll need a repeater, but hey, at least half of the way is done and you have a physical connection.
I had considered it but when I priced it up the cable plus repeaters got really expensive so I have run armoured power and will have to transmit the internet over the antennas
Scaffolding poll would do nicely for that job mate
Thanks in the next video thats exactly what I do
It's not just line of sight to the transmitter, you have to consider the fresnel effect.
Exactly, I am so glad there are so many people commenting here as it feels like I am going to University on it with all the help I am getting
I used a offset feed sat dish for 4G.....and like other people have really good results. They only have issues if you need a tall mast mount,in which case a proper microwave,mesh dish is a must have. some people in Australia in a group I belonged to, could get decent performance at something like 40km. In many areas, the real problem is the contention (customer load) on the cell tower. They can be really badly loaded at certain times of day, and it really hurts performance.
That sounds like a perfect solution I wish I had discovered it before!
I consistently get 11 up on starlink, although we may just have less clouds in the western US.
For my use case star link wins out as I do not upload and need very responsive ping.
Cool that you can have internet for 10 quid
Thanks! Its the hills on either side of us limiting the sky coverage that gives us the bad speeds I think
How much of the land is yours between your house and the 4G Tower? I ask as it may just be faster, cheaper, and more reliable. To trench a fibre in reinforced hose and build a small housing for a fibre switch and 4G Outdoor Modem with a 12v battery and solar panel. Trench as far as you can towards the mast.
its a couple of hundred meters to our boundary in that direction. Sounds like a great idea, once I get past the teething stages.
Firstly great vids. Love watching fellow off griders. Jealous about your hydro. There is a CZcamsr called Scott No Grid that did something similar to you. He has a video on how he powered ubiquity nano waves or airmax bridges. He used cheap charge controller to power them. Your router will be 12v whereas usb is 5v? He explains it better in his video. He uses home made lithium battery with 18650’s but you can use any 12 battery. Also have you tried the router with out the antenna ? I am running lte internet here and am 8 km from tower line of sight. People have told me I shouldn’t be able to get 4g internet but I can. Neighbours can’t. Sometimes you will experience signal degradation if your antenna cables are to long or to thin. Anyway best of luck. I can’t justify Starlink price while I get 4g.
Thats an excellent suggestion his video sounds so detailed so I will check it out now. After looking at all the comments I will be making some amendments to the system to hopefully make it a bit more reliable.
You mentioned needing 20W. Is that 5V @ 4A? 19V @ 1.1A? My suggestion is a 1m x 1m solar panel coupled with a LiFePO4 battery. LiFePO4 has much better cycle life and is a little cheaper than other Li Ion batteries. Looking around on Amazon I was able to find a TopSolar 100W 12V solar panel kit with a charge controller for less than 55 quid and a 40 Ah 12V LiFePO4 battery for another 100. Seems like it would be an easier thing to do than hydro power in your creek. Best of luck!
The challenge with that is that lifepo4 batteries are damaged by attempting to charge below freezing. Would be difficult in the winter requiring heating pads and extra panels to run the resistive heating and insulation.
Thank you, its 1.5A and 12V roughly but was guestimating at the 20W as the point to point wifi will draw a little bit from the power over ethernet. After reading most of the comments I have ordered a long length of armoured cable as most people said I would regret trying to make it remote power.
Ex Royal Signals. We used Pneumatic masts for Mobile Radio Relay. Masts were as solid as 👌
Had to google those. They look amazing!
The LTE modem probably runs on 12 volt DC, so you don’t need an inverter. However, avoid connecting a car battery directly because it goes over 12 volts. In such cases, you’ll need a buck converter. I would start by testing with a small solar panel and a car battery to see if it works.
Thanks, I haddnt thought about over voltage. I have bit the bullet for the next video and purchased the cable so that we have the flexibility for the future in case we need to change anything. Plus it gives me a power point up the hill for other things if i need it.
To get that setup on battery + solar panels, refer to 24V PoE. You'll discover that it ist just 24V attached to some wires of the LAN cable. If you then use Mikro Tik and Ubiquity dishes (I never tested TPlink) the equipment works from slightly above 7V up to abt. 28V. Building a 4S LiFePo4 battery pack with a 7€ battery manager PCB serves as a 12..16V supply. Add a cheap solar MPPT module and a 60W panel and you're done. Basically, that is what we use in the AREDN (Amateur radio Emergency Data Network). You can add a switch to be able to connect your notebook locally for configuration or to add additional WiFi antennas to connect to future buildings on your fields or have internet while driving your mower... But generally, search for AREDN setups and follow the hardware examples. But do not install the AREDN software on your devices as that makes them illegal without licensing and emergency situation.
Thanks thats a very good bit of information for me to refer to. I have run power up there but not ethernet as it got too expensive.
You can use an old hand drill as a turbine, just need the windmill / propeller. which you could even make your self, if you only need just a bit more than 5 volts (You said USB Power), with a small AGM battery, (removing the drill battery) you should be fine getting wind off that hill.
Really, that sounds like a great idea!
What website did you use to find your radio tower?
I used www.broadbandbuyer.com/store/wifi-antennas/wifi-outdoor-antennas/?msclkid=081968ab73dd1afb802b0e88a034f27b
although I dont know if i would reccomend what I have put together after reading all the comments. I will be releasing video 2 that might be better
@@offgridscotlandI’m also looking for website link (on screen at 11:25?) not having much luck on the broadbandbuyer site….