Does long range wifi work?

[ericm]

I'm having a house and shop built on land in Oregon. I want to have a gate at the road, which will be about 850' from the house. The shop will be 400' from the house in the opposite direction. Both are line of sight with few or no trees. I'll need wifi for a gate controller and wifi to the shop. Cat 6 cable won't work at those distances. To "wire" it I'd need fiber optic. I can run it along the electrical feed but its still adding to the bill.

Bandwidth needs are not high. I'm not going to be streaming movies to the shop, just running a couple cameras and a laptop to look stuff up. The gate controller needs even less, just voice and video from its camera.

I see a lot of long range wifi antennas and bridges that claim multiple kilometer range. Do they work? Running fiber is going to cost a lot more and I'm trying to not explode the budget too much.

 

[Gutman]

I'd look into ubiquiti wireless point-to-point bridges.

I'm using their nanostation loco m2 for house to garage, at over 300 feet (beyond CAT range), however, they advertise miles in range. I've got the signal turned way down and it works well. I have a wireless router on the garage end. I followed setup guidance from crosstalk solutions on utube and it was pretty easy to configure. There might be newer versions of the stuff, but I got the pair of units for less that $100. Not sure about a gate end solution for you, but I'm sure there's one. I'm looking to introduce security cameras next.

 

[Spire]

I will second what Gutman said. I have the same setup. Cheap and just works.

 

[reader2580]

Ubiquiti Nanobeams are about $100 each. They can easily go 400 feet and should go 850 feet. The ones at work have been working for several years with no issues.

 

[paranoid56]

Ubiquiti Nanobeams are about $100 each. They can easily go 400 feet and should go 850 feet. The ones at work have been working for several years with no issues.

i have them at 5miles, and i think max range is 10miles. they work great.

 

[ybnormal]

range will also depend on line of sight and what type of obstacles

pringles can wifi antenna - Google Search

 

[dogdog]

just running a couple cameras and a laptop to look stuff up. The gate controller needs even less, just voice and video from its camera.

Couple of camera will **** up all your bandwidth. Most long range WiFi will need line of sight, means no trees or hills or any other structure blocking point a to point.

 

[reader2580]

Couple of camera will **** up all your bandwidth. Most long range WiFi will need line of sight, means no trees or hills or any other structure blocking point a to point.

The Nanobeams I mentioned don't really need to be precisely aimed at the 400 foot distance. That is what we found with our Nanobeams at work.

 

[dogdog]

The Nanobeams I mentioned don't really need to be precisely aimed at the 400 foot distance. That is what we found with our Nanobeams at work.

Yea, never have the luxury to play with vna, smith charts or nanobeams. In general any directional quasi directional transmission needs line of sight. Either case if op uses any camera recording over this wireless transmission. It’s going to **** bandwidth.

 

[ericm]

As noted I have line of sight. No trees between house and shop. There is one between house and gate but there's a 90% chance that it's coming down before the house is completed.

I won't be streaming from the shop cams 24/7, just looking in once in a while to see if everything is ok. If I even set them up at all. It's not a high priority for me as the shop is in a rural area and the only way to get to it is through the gate and past the house. Right now I have a remote cellular cam on the property so I can watch construction and it uses very little bandwidth.

 

[rjacobs]

I would run fiber from house to shop and tie together with a ubiquiti system in the house. How you get to the roadway is a different story.

Fiber to do that 400ft run isnt terrible. 500 ft of armored OM3 LC/LC is $400 from FS.com... SFP+ LC converters are like 30 bucks to connect the fiber to something like a Ubiquiti switch(that has the SFP ports) or something like the Dream Machine Pro.

 

[u3b3rg33k]

As noted I have line of sight. No trees between house and shop. There is one between house and gate but there's a 90% chance that it's coming down before the house is completed.

I won't be streaming from the shop cams 24/7, just looking in once in a while to see if everything is ok. If I even set them up at all. It's not a high priority for me as the shop is in a rural area and the only way to get to it is through the gate and past the house. Right now I have a remote cellular cam on the property so I can watch construction and it uses very little bandwidth.

Either you have the bandwidth for cameras to work, or you don't.
If you do, then they'll work all the time. if you don't, they'll work none of the time.

Lots of cameras can do things like notify you of packages/vehicles/people/animal presence. for that to work they have to be on and functioning.

if you don't want to run fiber I'll second the vote for PtP unifi gear. you can get a pair of near gigabit radios for $500.

 

[skeer]

Can confirm, the Nanobeams are pretty sweet. When we lived south of Helena, MT the internet service was using those. We had LOS but it was roughly 8 miles to the peak their tower was on. I was surprised at the throughput.

 

[Milton Shaw]

Are you planning on having 120 volt ac at gate as I don't think solar will work for routers on all the time unless you have a lot of wattage solar panels.

 

[ericm]

Are you planning on having 120 volt ac at gate as I don't think solar will work for routers on all the time unless you have a lot of wattage solar panels.

Good point.

The gate's in place and powered from the 480v three phase meter for the irrigation pump. I will replace the controller when we move in. But thanks for the reminder for me to check what's available at the gate before I do that- the existing gate operator can run off 240 or 120 so it's possible that it's 240.

 

[theoldwizard1]

Look into "bridge" devices that use 802.11ah (a.k.a. HaLow). It has been around since 2017, but has not caught on do to low demand (people want to go FAST not FAR !)

The "claim" is 1Km (0.6 miles), but actual usable distance depends on thing like buildings, trees, etc.

Watch this video HaLow Bridge Kit

Wireless Bridge Point to Point - Amazon $60



In the house, connect to a WIRED port on your router. At the remote site, you code use a WAP/wired router.