how I solved a wifi install - this may help others

[rfuerst911sc]

So here is the situation I had , just completed a one year build of my two car detached man cave . It has metal siding and a metal roof and is aprox. 80 ' from the house which has vinyl siding and a metal roof . The house has Windstream DSL and that's what we use for streaming TV and the internet along with our cellphones . So the issue was how to get this same " stuff to work " in the garage ? The signal outside of the house was weak and we had no signal in the man cave

My first thought was run an ethernet cable from house router to garage router but reading on the net running that cable in the existing 2 " conduit that has the power lines from house to garage not a good thing to do . Something about cross talk/interference issues so now what ? Started trying to get smart on the internet did some research on a few different ideas . There are line of sight transmitters and other similar items . So armed with enough knowledge that would fit on the head of a pin off I went to Best Buy .

As luck would have it found a sales person there that was very knowledgeable about this stuff . After telling him my situation and setup he said I have exactly what you need ! He showed me a Netgear PL1000 the PL stands for power line . It is two pieces of hardware , one plugs into an electrical outlet near the home router and plugs into the router with an ethernet cable . The other piece of hardware plugs into an electrical outlet in the garage , that unit is also a wifi station . The two pieces of hardware " talk " to each other via the electric wires in the house and out to the garage ! The sales guy just looked at me and said " it's voodoo magic and works "

So bought it and came home , followed the very basic instructions and VOILA the damn thing works !!! I have a great signal in the garage and I was watching TV in the garage while my tablet was doing a Windows update and my wife was watching TV in the house all with NO buffering ! I could not be any happier with the purchase . So if any of you have a tough situation for wifi this might be worth looking into . Sorry for the long story .

[wdfifteen]

I looked into going that way to extend the wifi signal in my house and was cautioned to make sure the transmit and receive gismos were on the same leg of the wiring system. I have enough knowledge of this stuff to fit the pointy end of a pin, but I'm sure the smart guys here will chime in.

BTW I was finally able to fix my wifi signal problem. All I had to do was put all my stuff away!
I thought we only had two phone jacks for our DSL, one on each end of the house. We had piled stuff from our move in a room near the center of the house. When we finally put everything away I discovered a phone jack in the room! Moved the router, ran ethernet to the TV, and everything is working great now.

[Scott Douglas]

I use the same thing to get signal from my family room to the living room for my computer. Only time it seems to mess up is when something 'turns on' on that side of the house wiring, but for the most part it's pretty fool proof.

[BlueWing]

rfuerst911sc, my exact problem right now. Identical structures and a few feet further. I hopefully will move in sometime early fall/winter and have not done a lot of research on it.

When I do the power upgrade to the new shop I'll bury a second conduit for hard wire but that might not be in the near future. I need to go from 60 to 90 amps when completed.

Than I can use the trans/rcvr for the other outbuilding.

I'll keep watching this post to see how it works out in the long run and see what others are doing.

Thanks for posting.

Terry

[Gogar]

I use a netgear PL to get from my router in the basement to the Sonos soundbar under my living room tv. It's a little slow but fast enough to do what it's doing. It loses it's mind every few months and needs a restart but it's totally worth (not running a wire.) Thumbs up!

[Zeke]

I have a stereo speaker system that works the same way. Saves stringing speaker wires across the patio.

[rfuerst911sc]

I spent about 3 hours in the man cave today just putzing around . I had the TV on and was playing on the tablet , both were running fine with no issues . Signal strength is very good so far . This is not going to get used nearly as much as the house TV's or computers but so far is the perfect solution for the problem I had . The real test will be how good is it in a year or two ? Time will tell .

Regarding the statement " has to be on the same circuit " I had asked the Best Buy dude about that . I stated my setup is NOT on the same circuit but the house and garage are fed by the same circuit breaker box . He stated as long as the out building was not fed by a separate power meter it would work and he was right . And I'm pretty happy with the Roku device I purchased for 29.99 it is working well . We have two Roku sticks , one Roku box and now this latest " hybrid " which is a very tiny box . You can stick it to the bottom of the TV for a cleaner install and even comes with the two sided tape cut to size to do so . With the TV powering the device it makes for a very clean install . The only downside is it is line of sight for the remote vs. click anywhere in space with the sticks . A small sacrifice for the man cave

[rfuerst911sc]

Also want to add the man cave has seventeen 4 ' LED lights , a 24K mini split AC/heat pump and a 2 post lift . I have had everything on/running and NO interference . Only thing I haven't tried yet is the 60 gallon Ingersol Rand compressor with the TV on .

[Gogar]

It doesn't have to be on the same "circuit", It just has to be on the same leg of power.

[rfuerst911sc]

Gogar thanks for the clarification .