More Phone work at the Ranch

 

More Phone work at the Ranch

by rdpecken on Jul.07, 2010, under Communications

While my friend John was up for Ham Radio Field Day, we took some time on Sunday to test the 900 mhz cordless phone link to the cellphone.

I sure hope Tara doesn’t see this picture…

 
Phone Test Setup

We found a spot just off the drive where we got two bars on the cellphone.  We set up a temporary link there to see if we could shoot the 900 mhz cordless phone link through the trees. The box contains the Bluetooth Gateway, the 900 mhz base unit and the cellphone.  The inverter for power, and the battery were external for this test.

 
Gateway Setup

So what did we learn?  Yes we could shoot through the trees with our 900 Mhz link.  It was a little spotty with the 1/4 wave stub antenna, and required the beam to make it solid in the LittleHouse.  A call to Tara later turned up a buzzing sound on the line.  We traced that to having the cellphone handset too close to the other electronics.  It’s clear that the box we have here is too small.  But it is possible to make things work.

 
Homebrew 900 mHz Beam Antenna


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