I have been studying Wilson Electronic cellular dual band signal boosters.  They are BDA's of higher quality than the lowest price units.  An installation of these devices would cost approximately $1000 to $2000 for a standar type house SOHO application.  What do you get for these $$$?  You get a strong cellular connection in remote or under-covered cellular areas.  For example. in my office I receive my Verizon signals is some areas and not in others.  If I installed the device under discussion, I would receive a strong signal and have excellent voice/data transmission rates.

 

If you are a long way from a cell site(s) of any type and multiple cell vendor coverage (e.g. Verizon/AT&T) is required then multiple high gain antennas might be necessary.  This would add cost and complexity.  However, if only one vendor is needed then one high gain antenna would lessen cost.  This all points the necessity of performing a "site survey".  These are divided into two stages - preliminary and detailed site surveys.

 

The preliminary site survey (PSS) is used to determine if the installation is at all feasible and to document a few facts as to location, obstructions and other general details.   The detailed site survey (DSS) is much more detailed and covers building construction, mounting points for antennas, power sources and equipment locations.  The DSS also documents the azmuith and distance to the required cellular towers but this could be part of the PSS.  Both the PSS & DSS could be performed at the same time depending on the complexity of the proposed system.

The Zircon stud finder has a small learning curve but it is important to find a good "calibration" area.  Otherwise false alarms will occur.  It took a few anomolies to determine  I was not getting a good calibration.  Also, do not remove the instrument from the wall after calibration.

 

I purchased a stud finder today and also bought an expensive lithium 9VDC battery for it.  I have spent some time this evening mapping the wall in one of the bathrooms.  I am getting some unusual results that show the need for experience in using the device.  The "finder" will be useful in install jobs and is a great tool.  One great feature is the 120VAC alert feature.  As you go across a wire it alerts you with an LED and a tone.  It does the same thing when you go across a pipe.  It must be a field thing but it is good to know in either case.  It is a mid-$ range device and cost $20 with the battery.

Hi, everyone.  This is the Christmas Eve and here am I writing on this newly acquired addition to Moore Wireless Communications website.  Over the past few days we have changed from our own server to the Live experiment.  It looks great so far and hope we can continue this for a few years.  As we progress with the site we keep adding more cool stuff such as weather modules and other business related activities.

 

The look was loosely copied from our Red Hat Linux server running Apache.  The whole server was set up and operational in 2002 on a Dell Optiplex GX1 that was as old as the hills when we got it.  It is a 400MHz processor BTW.  It has been running every since.  Lately it will not boot to level 5 and defaults to 3.  With that came many strange happenings.  Yesterday we used HT Track to mirror the site and thus used it to generate this one.

 

Sadly, our old trusty server will go the way of all living things and it will be no more.  This is good as Red Hat and Fedora have come a long way since then.  There are so many on-line free services today we figure this is the next evolution so we are going with the flow.  Merry Christmas everyone.