5.8GHz 10mW analogue audio link - 850m with tomato purée cantennas

An experiment to see how far we could get standard consumer video senders to go. They're only 10mW. The waveguide antennas are made from Tesco tomato purée tins.

We did try S/PDIF over the video channel too, but it was mostly garbled.

Further audio: http://soundcloud.com/rjgscotland/5-8ghz-25mw-audio-link-850m

Category:

Education

Tags:

• 5.8GHz
• audio
• microwave
• wireless
• experiment
• video senders
• arthur's seat
• edinburgh

[miklk1973]

I would be curious to see what sort of range a pair of yagi's would give you.

[rjgscotland]

@miklk1973 So would I... It's been on my mind to attempt to construct a pair of yagis (although how accurately I'll manage that for 5.8GHz is yet to be seen). Other thoughts are to construct something out of parabolic cookware, or find a metal tube to make a correctly sized waveguide "cantenna". I'm hoping that with better antennas S/PDIF will work too (it works at shorter distances, I've got down the street before). I have another video showing S/PDIF going over these senders at short range.

[rjgscotland]

@miklk1973 Well it was working about 180m fine. I've since had a look at the SPDIF output on an oscilloscope and it's really bad. The waveform is being seriously deformed as there's just not quite enough bandwidth on the video channel for a clean 44.1kHz SPDIF signal. This would have been adding to the distance problems and it's a wonder that it seems to work at all!

[miklk1973]

what model senders are being used?

[rjgscotland]

@miklk1973 Philex 27998R. Just whatever was going on eBay cheap at the time! Need to pick this project up again and make better antennas, tomato purée cans are a bit too large for 5.8GHz.

[miklk1973]

What sort of range are you able to get sending s/pdif on those? I am really interested in playing around with that a bit. 2.4 is very congested around my home but 5.8 may be a workable wireless solution for sending audio.