On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 00:22:06 GMT, "DougSlug"
wrote:

I am looking into setting up remote monitoring of a lab at my
company using 2.4 GHz wireless cameras. The monitoring location would be
in a nearby building (a few hundred feet away across a small parking lot).
I know the range of those cameras is not very far, so I'm wondering if
anyone has any experience using any directional antennas (such as those
used for WiFi or the LPY2 "log periodic Yagi" from Ramsey Electronics) to
increase range on the receiver end.

Don't mess with amateur toys if you are trying to do a real job.

Go to a commercial supplier such as Tessco or Tecom and get antennas
made for professional use.

Assuming the stock transmitter
antennas are pointed toward the monitoring location, is there any chance I
could get this to work?

If there is *nothing* between the antennas other than atmosphere, a
few hundred feet is fine. Get a gain antenna for the receiver and
point it at the transmitter to null out as much of the many many other
signals you will find on the 2.4 ISM (Industrial, Scientific and
Medical) band, aka the garbage dump.

I am planning on using an AOR AR-8600MkII receiver with
NTSC decoder board since the cameras are of different makes and the
channels they use vary across manufacturers.

This will give you soft video.

The *make* of the camera doesn't matter. The frequency of the
transmitters and receivers do, and if you are running more than one
link you need a good bit of frequency separation.

I recommend equip and antennas from www.microtekelectronics.com. They
are reasonably honest with their specs, equip is about the best
quality without going to government spec, and they have some decent
antennas.

Put the transmitter and receiver right at the antenna and run the
video up and down from them. There is much less feedline loss at video
freqs than the 2.4 gig RF freqs. A few feet of antenna feedline is
about the max you can get away with. The Microtek stuff can withstand
the elements. Mount everything in a piece of PVC pipe to weatherproof
it.

I'm not affiliated with Microtek in any way.

You can buy Microtek from www.atvelectronics.com. Ask for Dan Potts.
They sell to dealers or to competent self maintaining end users who
will not need support.

There are some wireless video articles in the White Papers section of
our website which may be helpful.

Don't buy consumer junk or stuff from spy shops or you will be wasting
your money.

Steve


************************************************** *******************
Steve Uhrig, SWS Security, Maryland (USA)
Mfrs of electronic surveillance equip
website http://www.swssec.com
tel +1+410-879-4035, fax +1+410-836-1190
"In God we trust, all others we monitor"
************************************************** *******************