Wifi

Last year we had a team that made themself a Wifi acces point. (sorry Tom). I'm curious how you do that and maybe the costs of it. If it's affordable and not to difficult I'd like to try.
Please any info is welcome.

Andy Bloke on the forum had some sort of internet in the first year he is the one to ask

Wayne on the recee was always wanting to go to McDonalds, not that he liked the plastic burgers, he was only there for the free wifi ... whatever that is???

And tom does internet work in McDon's and is it free or will i get a bill on my return. Mcdonalds is my 2nd home to KFC

It's free at Mc, No bill.
Just figured it out. team intelmental was the wifi-point.
Well, Intelmental 1 your often online, would you please explain how it worked?

What you need, is a team with very cheap European Roaming Data on their Nokia smartphone, and the JoikuSpot ap installed.
This turns a modern nokia phone into an internet hotspot (only 9 euro's, too).

We tried out and thought of alot of different ways before using a linksys WiFi router that had a slot for a mobile 3g broadband card. there are a few other mobile hotspots that use the usb 3g dongles in the same way. It was a simple solution.

The thing for us was the external hi-gain antennas to make sure we had a good signal, the linksys had a standard antenna connector and we had it on the roof.

We tried JoikuSpot and almost used it, it was pretty good. Some of the new android phones can act as a wifi hotspot.

Thing is the data plan roaming around europe, best go with a prepay or contract add on where you have a set ammount of data. I think I paid around £5 for 7 days/2gb of data last time I was away.

intelmental1 wrote:

We tried out and thought of alot of different ways before using a linksys WiFi router that had a slot for a mobile 3g broadband card. there are a few other mobile hotspots that use the usb 3g dongles in the same way. It was a simple solution.

A dedicated device such as these, or the MiFi, have a great advantage over the JoikuSpot and Android WiFiTether as they appear as real "hardwired wireless" (or Infrastructure in jargon) just like you'd get from home broadband.

There are some good deals to be had at the moment on very short contract wireless broadband WiFi devices. One of these with a cobbled together USB power lead in a waterproof box on a tall stick would be ideal (It just needs some power from a cheap plug-in charger, and you put it somewhere where it can get a good phone signal, and all the laptops that want to use it can see it).

In '07 our tracking connection cost (our sponsor) hundreds to operate as some muppet put it on a per-minute rather than per Mb contract* - prices are generally much better now, so you may be able to use your own mobile phones to get cheap internet without worrying too much about the cost.

* We transmitted just over 1Mb of tracking data for the whole rally, but rather than £7.50/Mb, the bill was calculated based on how many minutes we were online!

What's a smartphone, a device that gives you an electric shock as the legs start wobbling with too much cannabis-flavoured absenthe?

If Carlsberg made mobile phones ...

Using a per MB has its own disadvantages.

Recently we used this when abroad with my laptop. Unfortunately we forgot to turn off windows auto updates on my laptop and it managed to download the biggest ever update costing about £30.00 in the process !

Since I don't have a smartphone, and don't want one, I'd better informe at a phoneshop about the dongles. Sure will take the minutes/mb story in account.
If it's affordable, I'd like tor try to fix this