Yagi Cantenna (Yagi in a Can) 2.4GHz
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
- Yagi antenna for the 2.4GHz spectrum (Wi-Fi). What's different about this antenna is that it is inside a cantenna giving it more range by narrowing its beamwidth making it more directional than a standard Yagi.
yagi template: goo.gl/GJrrUX
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Email: andrewantennas@gmail.com
A good Yagi calculator can be found here: www.changpuak.c...
Copper foil tape: www.ebay.co.uk/...
The cantenna is made from a toilet brush holder. These seem to be a standard size but the dimensions are: 265mm length, 90mm diameter.
To test my antennas I use a test router 40 meters away with the signal going through three brick walls.
copper foil tape is also used in stained glass windows/art panels. It is wrapped around both pieces of adjoining glass and then soldered to hold the two together.
Beautiful ! Just a small remark : BNC is useful up to 1 GHz (1.5 GHz). Using SMA may be more advantageous.
Friend I use bnc in all my projects and the gain or impedance does not change .
You my friend just saved me around $100 US! I was just at Lowes pricing copper pipes tubes and rods for my own antenna. From what I'm seeing from the end of your video this will give me direct access to the AP I've been struggling to stay connected to. All for pennies on the dollar, and for a toilet brush can it looks a hell of a lot better than a 3 foot long monstrosity of copper piping!
Thank you for covering insulating the driven element from the rest of the Yagi. I prefer insulating the front parasitic elements also but have no proof that helps. Once out of the air, the wave propagates down the metal at the same speed.
Hope you make a 5 Ghz cantenna as well.
Cheers
As a radio ham this is all very interesting, thanks for explaining in depth and so clearly.
It might not be a bad idea to have a known measurement on all the printouts to make sure the scale is correct on the finished print.
I don't think he responds.
@@icraftcrafts8685 You are not understanding his question. When the template is printed, it is important to verify that the dimensions were not altered/reformated by the spooler and/or printer.
@@sinless1 Ok I see now, apologies. Here are 2 links that may help:
www.changpuak.ch/electronics/yagi_uda_antenna_DL6WU.php
www.ab9il.net/wlan-projects/wifi6.html
Man makes my piece of wire for antenna a joke. You sure know your stuff here 👍
Hello, very interesting and well documented presentation, I gonna test your wifican antenna !
My pov about your realisation :
- Black paint is not a good candidat because it increase the temp in the can and increase the thermal noise never a good for signal noise ratio. The best paint are shiny white paint (never use mat) this is the same raison that you must never wall outside an house with mat paint.
- Take care about bnc connectors they could be very problematic and increase loose and noise or buy expensive connector certifié for your work frequency; for this reason every as soon as possible i always solder directly the wifi dongle (or SDR dongle ) directly on pcb with a shortest low noise wire and put dongle in metalic grounded box. This make some differents with sdr dongle.
- If refer to pratical antenna handbook (the holy antenna bible) with an air core in your case plexiglass this kind of antenna must be less sensitv to "Electrical vector" than with a copper or Aluminium, it could be interesting to compare the 2 case copper VS air core antenna.
- Have you be able to test with a vector analyser (minivna & co) ?
Thanks
Great design Andrew.
I noticed that the driven element became a folded dipole when you soldered the copper with thru it, ingenues.
very good at giving full information and insight into the fundamentals of wifi... top marks mate... highly reccomended.
I bought one of those joke yagi's your holding @00:50, at the time I thought I was doing something wrong with it. I installed a wireless IP Security Cam system around a lady's house, 12 camera's. She also wanted one down at her big 2 car garage (had a living quarters above) which was roughly 300-350ft (90-105 meters), with a clear LOS. whole system was based off the home's wireless router, I used a pair of the ol classic WRT series linksys wireless 54G's (fastest @ the time). setting up as an AP... that bloody garage camera was the biggest pain in the.... I went from stock antenna to a bigger pair of -11dB (on both router&AP)
caught a drift of an image for about 30 seconds, then poof.... SO I bought from fleaBay, that very same shiny stick you're holding there @:50, aimed& roof mounted it,....there, for hours, me the roof became one,.. I was better off with the higher db internal dipoles.
Keep in mind, I had no clue back then about wireless sigs, rf in the gigahertz range, antenna types, wave length's, resonance freq, etc I was an old school tv antenna guy just learning about computer networking ;)
Solved the dilemma very painfully.....ran a buried cat7 drop out to garage...lmao, I wish I knew then what I know now....d'ohhhh
Fantastic build. Very impressive results.
Andrew, another enjoyable video.
Wow! Thank you very much for this video! Nice that you sad that cheap yagi antennas on ebay does not work! I was close to buy it! Now I'll just have to make a diy yagi like this! Thank you, times ten!
I agree that those cheap WiFi yagi antennas off ebay don't work - I bought one just like it and it is junk - I am glad this gentleman told everyone about them.
I dont understand this: on minute 15:43 you are making contact between the center of the connector and the ground, is that okay? you are short-circuiting both ends of the conenctor?
it seems you connect the centre wire to the reflector but not driven element
Fun idea, have you ever added a schottky diode (1N5711) and connect it to one of your antennas in order to capture power from received signal and the diode will convert the signal/power into DC power! you could even add a single led to the diode/ant and it should light up. Thoughts?
Its called a rectenna
The cantenna you built is mounted horizontally. Most routers have vertical antennas. Wouldn't the cantenna be have a higher gain if vertically mounted/polarized?
You could glue two small plastic guides on the entry side to stop the perspex moving if dropped
im skeptic with the feed point,i thought folded dipole were fed in on center on one dipole element,so the element would produce one full 1/2 magnitude, feeding it that way could produce cancellation because of reverse directions, isnt the folded dipole 300 ohms, no 4:1 coax balun?
These Antenna is good for DATV Reception and Transmission with a Adalm Pluto SDR!
Nice video. I like your Hakku soldering station too.
Pretty neat. I wonder, the plastic lid you put in front of the antenna to close it up and make it look neat, will likely introduce some RF loss. The lowest RF loss material you could use there is styro foam (mostly known and used as packing material) as it has very low density, RF goes right through it. Also in speaking of RF losses, the plexi glass material you used, might also introduce RF losses, perhaps comparable to using just FR4 circuit board material. For testing your antennas, you might want to consider getting a NanoVNA - about 150 Dollar on ebay. Then you can actually tune for maximum performance.
How you can use NanoVna for wifi antennas? They work at 3 times higher frequenicy than NanoVna able.
I'm confused about the driven element. Is it a folded dipole? The short by the vias would seem to indicate so. But with center of BNC driving the center of the element, by symmetry, the current flows in opposite directions, and the fields should cancel. It doesn't seem right to me.
I'm curious, how the distance between the upper and lower elements affects gain. If you used two sheets of Perspex for spacing would it be better or worse. Is There an optimum spacing between upper and lower?
I once had a long distance between my antenna and computer, I was afraid of the coax losses. So I disassembled a wifi dongle cut the antenna and mounted an N connector to match the N connector on my Yagi. I connected the wifi dongle directly to the Yagi. Then ran usb cable to my computer. It worked great, I used that for many years. It was all mounted on a boat in a marina.
Also, it looks like there are only two lengths of foil, please post the lengths as printers often change the original size. Then I would make a quick template to cut the all.
sir you don't mention this video distance and wide and how long size. please in from me.
Also see how the elements collect all things also and how, where connection and that after the result and speed test where? please description all elements and connection
Has anyone asked what the width of that copper tape is? It's sold in here in the US by fractional inches, of course. So...1/8", 1/4", 1/2", ECT.
I figure yours would be in MM, so would you elaborate? Your ebay link for it in the description has gone out of service, I'm afraid.
Thanks!
U need an alt-az telescope mount😀 they have ones with motors and hand controls. Even an Ethernet port so you can control it from your computer. 😀
I would say just lay the copper tape on the plexiglass oversize then trim the ends to the template with a steel straight edge. You will get them deadly accurate like this and no fingerprints under the tape.
Another source for copper tape is a stained glass shop. If they teach you how to make stained glass, they have the tape you need
Great video. How would the calculations change if you just drilled a hole at the ends of the element dimensions and wrapped wire around/through the plexi?
Another question regarding the center conductor of the RPSMA pigtail incorporating RG316?? from Ebay? I am assuming that you must prevent any short circuiting of the center lead with the element that is soldered to the shield driven element, as in drilling a hole large enough to allow the insulation of the center lead to go thru the plexi?
how much of an improvement would you get out of this pointing it into a parabolic dish, something like a used satellite TV receiver?
I have a question if you can solve pls. I made a yagi antenna which i mounted on roof which capturing good signals, on other hand (receiving end) there is no antenna. So i want to know if there is any antenna that can receive the signals from yagi antenna and spread those signals to my mobile phone. I shall be very thankful to you if you solve my problem. also note, i do not want to use any wifi or any dongle. what i need is an antenna at the end which receives signals and spreads those to my mobile. Thank you.
Do you think you could also use glass for this project? and like the yagi gun could you just keep adding elements?
Sorry, but are the positive and negative poles shorted? The tape you weld it both above and below ...
does Wi-Fi have a polarity ,and I wonder if the back of the can can be make parabolic to make the focal point in line with your folded die pole ,kind of like a catchers mit .good work its very hard to make Yagi's in 2.4 gig .
So, if this works, it's just dumb luck since there is no matching from the balanced driver (ie the yagi) to the unbalanced load (ie, the co-axial connection to the router ...
Andrew, in "The Wifi Gun Does it Really Work?" you said that shorting the reflector to the active element (center to braid) would cause harm to the active equipment - agreed, and reduce efficiency, also agreed.
Yet you have done just this, shorting centre to braid since the two sides of the aerial are connected by the vias. I was anticipating the braid being connected to the can/reflector. Am I missing something?
The vias in the driven element are being used to form a folded dipole, lowering the chance of messing up the tape by cutting it in half to form the two elements. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole_antenna#Folded_dipole)
Did I hear you actually state at 0:45 that the elements on the eBay commercial yagi were configured more for 150mhz than 2.4Ghz?
Hi Andrew, great job on your videos on antennas. I was planning to build a 10 or 15 element Biquad Yagi similar to your previous design. After seeing your new antenna design, I have a few questions-ideas that your answers-insight would be most appreciated.
Here goes :-
1. How does this antenna perform compared to your previous Biquad Yagi?
2. Would the Biquad Yagi provide similar performance with wider beam width?
3. How about a double Biquad Yagi?
4. Would re-positioning the yagi element at 1/4 or 1/2 wavelength
inside the cantenna make a difference?
5. How about a Biquad Yagi Cantenna
Thanks. Looking forward to your next video.
no need for impedance matching then? Nrfl01, for example connecting straight to module with no balun.
Andrew, great video.
Can you post the dimensions of the template. If you give one dimension, I can use that one dimension to determine the others. As a few others have mentioned, some printers may enlarge or shrink the PDF, making the dimensions change, thereby altering the efficiency of this antenna. Millimeters or inches, whichever is easier for you.
Thank you.
you should print in A4 paper, that's the configuration of the PDF document.
Question, if you had to transmit 2.4 and or 5.8 wifi from one building to another over 10miles apart like me in setting up long range mesh network, what antenna would you use and please dont just say dish lol as thats expensive and stands out a lot! id like to try and be somewhat discreet as i may likely be using clients roofs and they would not like an isaw on the roof. Could a patch antenna do the job, perhaps stacked patch like the larhe one you opend up which was printed on a pcb but i dont understand how that works as it is not an active array and i was led to believe during my time in the army as a rad-op that you cant just add in another ant. So how do those stacked antennas allow for additional yagis/ patch antennas etc to use one cable and not increase power??? Really hope you understand what im asking and that you reply to this, i will look to find such a video you have done and comment there just incase you dont quite follow. Thanks again.
thankyou mate i really enjoyed that cheers
good video. thank you.
what wpuld happen if you had the driven element spaced laterally the same distance as you have the other elements. instead of the driven elements being speced the thickness of that peice of plexiglass(3-5mm), they were spaced the same distance as the elements are horizontally? am i making myself clear? sorry if not.
Hi bud really great work I'm going to Def get on and make one .. Thanks for the inspiration
thats really good. the perspex yagi idea (without the can) might be a good way to make one that could be robust and compact enough for a backpack. would the yagi without the can be a little less directional?
wow,,clear.concise.youre a gem,,,,,i dabbled with ham/cb radio in 80s..im looking to build a dab yagi,using tv aerials,i cant remember the formula for arriving at sizes for beam,reflector,emitter.directors..it was wavelength divided by 934 ??? or something?,,,,,my son lives approx. 75yards(in old money )lol.away,he cant afford internet,so id like to build a cantenna. would it be worth doing 1 to transmit from my house to 1 to receive at his? its unobstructed view ?could lin e them up with laser pointer ?,,,again thanks for being so good ,,,jimmy
Did you solder the coax screen to one side, and the center lead to the other side which was just soldered together? You are basically making a short circuit, and so it is not an antenna, and you are breaking the output driver of the wifi card.
Yep, i was thinking the same thing
This is Great!, but isn that a Short Circuit at the fiirst "Director"? the ground and the center pole are circuited together?, or is this common in microwaves?
I really don´t understand how this works because the sheets don´t tuch themself so there is no conection instead of the first
Great design for indoor use. Don't use it outside though - rain on the tube will wreck the gain.
How exactly do we use a template of we don't have one?
Do you maybe have measurements?
Andrew. Can I use copper wire instead of copper tape? In my country is difficult to find copper tape.
If I put the copper wire exactly I the middle of each black line of the template will it work ? How about 2mm thick copper wire ?
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
That will work yes
what could we use to stick the copper wire onto the perspex?
glue of course.... hahaha
In theory, could it be heated into position using short bursts of heat being careful not to distort the perspex?
I've never seen anyone connect the cable to the center of the driven element like that before. Does that actually work OK compared to the traditional ways?
Yagi antenna having regular distance elements and same-length direction elements, are pretty much ineffective if compared against real inhomogenic yagi antenna designs which have tuned elements and as well tuned distances inbetween them. This kind of "homogenic" format also has a "dead end" where no more gain can be achieved by just increasing the number of elements (because it detunes while increasing, causing pretty big sidelobes. Inhomogenic tuned arrays consistently increase gain while increasing length instead. Homogenic arrays with undercritical regular spacing are very broad-band on the other hand). Feeding two driven elements behind each other for the grounded (Reflector) and driven (1st element in front of the reflector) creates kind of a driven "capacitor" , not really making up a regular dipole in the first place. The usual way of properly building a yagi antenna using a loop (300 ohms) or split (75 ohms) dipole as the driven element - with a symmetry converter which is required to attach both wires of the router cable to it - is different.
not wanting to sound dim, but why do we short the earth to the signal on the SMA/BNC connector?
Old video but pretty sure this was an open dipole feed. If you’re referring to grounding the waveguide then that is essential
I have my supply sitting in front of me ready to do this. when you take your template down on your plexiglass you said Center your first element at the edge of your plexiglass.
But later in your video I see you have it positions differently
That's only because for most of the videos I make many prototypes filming over 3 or 4 days.Starting with the first element at the edge I found makes it easier to center the rest.
andrew mcneil cant print template m8..page is strange ...can u upload it somewhere ? cheers
Andrew the link for the Copper foil tape don't work how wide is it ? Thanks
Will you in future videos consider working with other frequencies i:e 700-800 MHz spectrum for lte 4g?
is this not compatible with 4g? What's the lowest frequency you can realistically get with this setup?
would have liked to see you compare it to built in wifi during the scan at the end. otherwise great video!
Nice video. Question, Most commercial antennas appear to be Vertically polarized. Yours appear to be Horizontal. Am I missing something or does it not matter at this frequency?
It dipends on the signal
Very nice! Thanks for sharing!
Hello there :), my question is simple is it longer better? I mean because I have 300 mm. long pipe should I reduce it on 265? Thank you in advance. By the way you are awesome, I did watch all of your videos and I'm very glad. Thank you!
would I get the same results if instead of using plexiglass & copper tape, I printed the pattern on a PCB?
incredible- makes me wish I still had my radios.....
I'm looking in to methods of extending WIFI and internet connectivity from the main house about 500 ft/150m to a second building on my property, and researching Yagi prototyping before buying hardware for the second bldg.
I have a large amount of scrap materials to use for this project, but I don't really understand the physics at work here to know what to use.
How does the diameter and spacing of the elements effect the waves, and what is needed for 2.4 Ghz standard WIFI? is there wiggle-room, or is it very specific?
Also, would I need to do anything to the router at the main house, or should the Yagi at the second building pick up the signal inside without a problem?
Thanks for the content!
Did you compensate the element lengths for the dielectric constant of the Perspex? What are the frequency bandwidth 3dB downpoints?
Hey Andrew,
This makes me wonder if one could make stained glass decorations that would also be wi-fi antennas? Obviously I don't mean a 'yagi' style, but a a mere basic wi-fi booster mayhaps?
Stained glass workers use this copper tape to line the edges of glass before soldering together...I think it would be dead brilliant to make decorational wi-fi boosters. windows or not they'd still look cool & as long as they're made properly, they could hang virtually anywhere...minding the critical info for reception of course.
It mght constrain the direction you need tho.
I really enjoy your videos. I have not yet built any antenna but , have been looking at the DIY many months and many different types of antenna for long rage wifi. What I would like to see if it is possible is a duel band 2.4 MHz/5MHz . Using canteen for the 2.4MHz and the helix for the 5Mhz. And a duel band USB adapter to link them at the antenna. My question is ..IS IT POSSIBLE?
What's the name of that white plastic small screw sir?
it would have been better if you created small notches to fold the copper tape around top to bottom on each of the elements to create a better uniform microstrip for the radiator and elements. This would eliminate the soldering top to bottom of the tape.
Instead of laying this on a flat plane like your perspex, could you possibly put it on a curved surface like a clear fluorescent tube cover or would that mess with the waveform?
Unless you are building a helical antenna. google it.
Does the can need to be metal? Can it be PVC or something plastic?
If I was planning to use sma connector, would it be male to male connector or male to female connector?
Hi Andrew, will a standard aluminum foil tape work as substitute in place of the copper tape? Thanks!
Great video. Very informative.
EDIT: Sorry I made a comment before halfway of this video. I see I can use aluminium foil. (smh) I was too excited for this DIY project.
UPDATE: Another question. Does it need to be transparent for the board that holds the elements? Thanks!
Completely wasted my time watching this. This design has some serious design faults! A yagi consist of dipoles as elements.
@@haraldhaporta425 9:35
One question, in Venezuela i can't find a cylinder with 90mm diameter. I found a 134a cylinder with 72mm of diameter, if i use it i will have problems using this template? Or what should i use?
you will be able to fit the Yagi in but 72 mm is the absolute minimum diameter for 2.4GHz
@@andrewmcneil yes, the thing is i don't know if make some interferences with resonances and other things using that diameter.
i used a hard card board in stead of plexi glass can i connect the antenna directly to my router?
Sir, Can you please give us the dimension of at least the reflector, so your tutorial is fully worth and usefull.
Hi Andrew. I watched two of these great videos and I am wanting to give them a try. But Before I do I would like to know if a yagi can be used on a Android tv box.? Will it improve the signal ?
andrew mcneil tell me which antenna is fablous for gian wifi signal and also qualitiy of that wifis best anteena?dish?parabolic?yagi?parabolic dish? kickstart biquad??? please help me
Does this work for cellular aswell? 4G signals in particular. And is the connection stable? Or does it introduce lag spikes or disconnects?
If I were to make the can slightly conical would that have the effect of slightly 'opening up' the signal. I would like to utilize the antenna for use with a UAV using an automatic following system but your comment on the cantenna being extremely sensitive would preclude it from being used because of the slight delay in the 'following' system may cause the signal to be lost.
I have seen several posts here asking for dimensions of the template, could you please advise the distance between the first and second element in order to ensure correct scaling.
or can i use 3 soda can and put it together?
Isn't your driven element shorted to your ground plane right now because you put those 'vias' in between the sides the lead is soldered to? Shouldn't the ground plane be connected to the can rather than the driven element?
If you had created the reflector from tape like the template had it, you can leave the can isolated. If you don't have that, the only thing acting as the reflector is the can and you're not connecting to it. That will at LEAST lose you a lot of gain.
can i used copper wire instead copper tapes? and also can i used pvc pipe instead can?? thanks a lot, good work
wire yes. pvc is non conductive and thus will not (for the most part) affect/direct the signal. dialectric (non conductive) materials can and do play an important role in signal propigation. so pvc = no if you want the same performance characteristics
Really great video. Love it.
Hi Andrew, would this be as long range capable as a dish with a cantenna such as you have made? Also i have sent an email to you but due to being in a rush i left out that id like to know if you still sell ants as getting parts here in Singapore is quite expensive so it might be far better to just ask if you still make them for others and if you would post it to me over here please.
Regards
Christopher
Ideally for a dich you want a short waveguide at ½ wavelength 63mm.
Hey mate. I was wondering if the antennas you make are also able to assist in boosting the 4g/ LTE phone reception as the antennas I’ve bought don’t make any difference. Cheers in advance old mate
These are for 2.5 ghz band for Wi-Fi. For 802.11 n/b/g ect. So no but you can find plans to make your own for LTE.
wonder what wil happen when i use my ralink 3070 1000mw chipset on one of youre cantennas! i get a range of 3 kilometer with the standard 7 dbi omnidirectional outdoor antenna :p
Just to be certain I can use a standard USB cord to solder on for connection right...? I have a big gaming computer and I am always looking for improvements in performance.
Negative. You cannot use a USB cable to connect to the antenna. The antenna requires a coaxial cable that has a center conductor and an outer conductor/shield. The center conductor transmits the RF signal to the driven element while the outer conductor is the ground connection (in this case, the completed circuit connection for the driven element).The USB is a universal serial bus connector and is used for an entirely different purpose.
Good job! nice and simple design. Can this type of antenna be used for transmission? (also with focused high Db "beam")
Yes will work just fine
andrew mcneil Thanks for the quick reply
what if i will gonna use PCBoard, does it work?
Well, the template is not secure because printer can shrink or expanded. I'm assuming you calculated the yagi for 2450Mhz, right? I'll use my yagi calculator to calculate the lenghs my self
what about your test with your yagi calculator ?
Can you make a PDF with meassure of 400 to 900mhz for same type antenna???
Hello there! Can you put an aditional template with the right dimensions in mm? It would be a great help for those without good printers. Thanks
Hello Beloved Mr. Andrew,
Would the project be more powerful if the tube / can that you have was made of copper? in that case how many mm thick copper?
question nr two, would you get a more powerful Yagi cantenna if it was longer?
Question nr three, how many cm is the diameter of your can? and would it be more powerful if the diameter of the can was wider?
Question nr four, which coaxial cable do you recommend and with which freq or brand ?
to be honest with you Mr Abdres, your freaking awesome and i encourage you to more projects
The tube is not the active antenna, just a 'shaper' of reception angle.
I cannot download the pdf to properly print. With the current permissions I cant print it from the web either.
+Ian Steedman I have the same problem.
drive.google.com/file/d/0BzmJxxD-Z4B6NTl2dHZnUDFZWEE/view
Fantastic! Could you tell me how much DBi this cantenna+Yagi?