Schlagwort: WLAN

The last week at work started and I’ve only few days in Belfast. At work I’m still working on the project „Sensors and Connected Health“. As I told in my previous post, we installed the outdoor WLAN – Unfortunately not successful. But last week we got a new access point (AP). So I plunged into work and configured the AP and then I connected the big outdoor antenna (fluoroscent lamp) with the AP-plug. Yeah, it works. We boosted the transmit power and radiated the whole room with WLAN-signals. But this isn’t the purpose. So we went outside and tested the signal strength. Overall the signal was very good and much better as the internal or small antenna. There are only little problems with the vertical angle, which is very small and therefore dependent of the height, and little obstacles like a bush or humans.

Another point is the Aingeal device from Intelesens. This little device needs a internet connection to transmit the data up to the cloud. Either over WLAN or MiFi. To establish a connection between the Aingeal and the WLAN/WiFi is very simple. But there are a few problems: The connection to the server is lost after a few minutes, it can’t establish a connection to the MiFi, the MiFi has no internet connection, the configuration of the Aingeal device is wrong and it beeps the whole time… Yannik and myself are troubleshooting a long time, but we don’t know what is the problem. Maybe we’re never going to know. We’re still writing a documentation and protocols, made photos and videos.

We have also got some touch devices. At first we got a touchscreen display with 17 inch. Unfortunately we couldn’t try this with the PC from work, because Windows 7 Enterprise doesn’t support touch options. But my coworker Jannik had his laptop at work and we used it. For example we used Paint.net to test the touch surface with a image editing program. This works very good but Windows 7 isn’t very comfortable to work with a touch screen. So we tested it with Windows 8, which is optimized for touch screens. And it works, only with a few problems, very smooth. The second device was a 10 inch Tablet-PC with Windows 7. This tablet is very slow and has only a harddrive with 10 Mb! free space. But we found a way, how we can improve the speed: Android. This operating system is optimized for touch screen devices and is also used in smartphones. The operability was amazing and much better as Windows 7. Currently we used it for monitoring the vital signs from the Aingeal and troubleshooting for the WLAN and MiFi.

As I told in my last post, Jannik, Damien and myself installed the outdoor WLAN. At the end of last week we get the right cable for the outdoor antenna. So we connected the access point with the fondly called fluoroscent lamp. But nothing happend. Even if we stood near to the antenna, the signal was very weak and if we went away from the antenna the signal was lost. Overall a depressing test, because the signal with the 1.5 metre antenna is lower as the ten times smaller indoor antenna. So Jannik and me began to troubleshoot the problem: cross tests, resets, configure, gathering solutions… Until now we’re not really sure what the problem is. I think the antenna and the access point are faulty. Maybe we would have spent more money to the devices. This are the cheapest devices that we had found, because Damien wanted it so. Now he will contact the distributor and maybe we get a new device. Let’s see what’s next.

Our IT-Supervisor Damien suggested that we can set up the outdoor WLAN Access Point. So Jannik, Damien and me set up the device, fixed on a mast, for a small approximately 2500 square metre big area in the near of the NIBEC building. At first we tested the strength of the signal with the internal antenna. Which was very sober, because it had a high signal loss after 50 metres. Then we plugged in the antenna from our ZyXEL Repeater and voila the signal was still after 50 metres very good. Even behind a building we have connection to the access point. So we decided to go as far as we have a signal. Result: After 215 metres behind a tree we lost the signal. This suprised not only our IT-Supervisor, Jannik and myself was suprised too how far this small antenna worked.

Maybe this or next week we get the right cable for the outdoor antenna, which is 1,5 metre long. Then we can establish a connection for whole Jordanstown and maybe up to Belfast 😉 Anyhow it’s enough to cover a football pitch. That is the only reason for the huge outdoor antenna.

Also the education coordinator from Germany Mr. Bavar together with Ms. Neumann from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Kevin Shine visited me. They want to know what we’re did at work and if we’re pleased with the work and coworker.

At the last days me and my coworker Jannik had been installing a lot of repeater. The configuration is not so easy, because the repeater can act as a bridge or an access point or both together and in combination with the repeater mode. So we tried a lot of modes for the repeater. All these repeater are connected with one WLAN-Modem. But the problem is that they can’t establish a wireless connection to the Modem – only if they are wired. But this makes no sense because you must have these two devices. Our mentor had the brilliant idea that we can remove the WLAN-Modem. And what happens? It works. So the configuration and testing of days was a waste of time.

But the only problem wasn’t the testing. The modem and the repeaters refuse the service at several times and we didn’t know why. Yeah, it’s technics.
But at the end we have configured an army of repeater.