Stuff to do…

The Wifi here at Campo San Felipe was much, much better than at Kiki’s but there still were glitches. And the big one was my big RV blocking the signal from the people back from where I’m parked. There’s a small building shown below across the entrance road from my spot where they had recently moved the Modem/Access Point and they started getting complaints as soon as the big RV next to my spot moved in a week before I arrived. And then I moved in blocking even more of the signal so many back further from the building weren’t getting a usable signal at all. I’d mentioned a couple days after I’d moved here that the Wifi wasn’t that great and if they needed some help with it I’d be willing and more than able. So we talked about their system and the groundskeeper keeps telling me he’s got a plan to put a repeater out in the yard on top of the new building so everyone will get a better signal. I made an assumption that they’d bought the right kind of equipment. Didn’t get a request to help so since I was getting a pretty good signal, I didn’t think much about it. Heard some rumblings about poor Wifi around the park though.

And then a couple days ago I see 3-4 guys over near where I heard the new Wifi antenna was going to go, and they’re kind of ganging up on the groundskeeper about the Wifi being weak and all. I was over there listening for a bit and try to straighten out the misconceptions about Wifi and then offer to get the repeater all set up. The groundskeeper guy was really relieved and handed me the box and all the paperwork.

So I do a search and turns out it’s not a Repeater. It’s a plain ordinary Access Point that has to be physically wired to the modem. It’s not the kind that can be configured to accept the modem’s built in Wifi signal off the air and then retransmit it without needing a wired connection like they thought. So tell the guy that he’d need to run a Cat6 cable up to the roof…and that it would be much easier to run the cable to the wall there in the below picture and just put the AP in a box and run an antenna from it up right next to the wall. And there’s where it would go, pic below. Right on that wall on the right side of this pic, sticking up into the air around 8 feet. The box would be on the other side of the wall so it would be shaded most of the time. The sun would tend to be to our right in this picture (that’s the moon there on the left). And it’ll get really hot here in summer so any shade would help the AP hardware survive. With the antenna in that position, it’ll cover 95% of the park at least. If it was installed up on the building, on the left side of the roof as they’d first planned, there’d be a signal shadow on the right side so those people there would get a weaker signal.

So having gotten permission to work on their system, the groundskeeper shows me where the modem is inside the little building, and it’s just sitting on a low bench. So I mount it high up on a wall, (which immediately improves the signal strength of those due east of the groundskeepers building, and my signal strength too to the north just across the driveway). I spent quite a while with it connected to my computer learning its quirks, plus configuring it with permissions and SSIDs and passwords and what not.

Then I install the AP, connecting it to the modem directly as required…it’s an Amped Wireless made in California and you’d think their designers would know better but it takes forever (30 minutes or more) for it to negotiate with the Telcel modem. Which probably sends several preambles in Spanish as it negotiates with the Amped for packet exchange. Minor stuff the AP doesn’t even need, but sometimes they can be important. The Amped takes forever figuring out what they mean. Eventually the Amped and Telcel decide they can communicate and the Amped connects. Damn. Finally displays, “Connected to Internet”. I had been distracted and didn’t really think about how long it took. Meanwhile, I installed my own Linksys AP to the Telcel and I’m up and online in just a couple minutes.

So then the Wifi suddenly improves for several people in the RV park, leaving others still in the dark, signal wise. I gave the guy the new SSID and password, he passes it around, and soon several people are now getting online with a better signal. Yea!

And then those that are not, convince the guy that he should put that Amped box up on the roof just for a test. So he goes and unplugged it and all, thinks better of it and tries to reinstall. He plugs it back into the modem and messes with it because it doesn’t connect quickly, same problem I’d had the day before. But…he keeps messing with it. Breaks the config I’d spent two hours getting to work. Damn. Remember I still have my own Wifi AP I’d installed and was watching Netflix so wasn’t paying attention.

Next day, he asked me to work on it again. I hadn’t realized about the negotiation it has with the modem taking so long at that point and struggled getting it up and running. Took another two hours before I realized what was happening. I hate Amped products now. Anyway, now it was back to where I’d set it two days before and it was working pretty well. Except for people in the back of the park. So I get them up and running too. Mostly they just had misconceptions about how it was suppose to be set up on their computers. One guy though, a regular here at the park, knew about the poor signal having stayed here back when the modem was even further away from the RV’ers. He had bought a repeater for his RV. Installed a big ol’ antenna on the ladder at the back end. But he couldn’t get it configured. Asked me to help.

First thing I find is that their Dell laptop won’t allow turning on the internal Wifi. Hmm. And the repeater device needs configuration that it won’t perform correctly. Hmm. So, I do what any good tech does, took the device home for some careful scrutiny. At home, I find on google that the Dell problem can be solved by pressing Fn+PrtScn. Yea! One problem down. Then connect the device to my computer and access it’s config files. Fiddle around in there and set things that I think should be set based on what the owner told me.

And the next day, go over and set it up, work on it for an hour without success. Hmm. So at least it’s an AP now, just that it wouldn’t configure as a repeater. Head on home. Watch some of the NFL game, than realize I can access the AP from my Wifi receiver. And do. This time though, the survey button is available. And soon have it connected and retransmitting the parks Wifi signal inside their RV. Yeah!

Damn that was fun, getting all those systems up and running smoothly. I haven’t lost my touch entirely just yet…

Thanks for reading!