So here it is. My last big video for 2023. I hope you enjoyed the show this year😁 Like always I will do a small recap of 2023 regarding my videos, projects, release schedule and everything else involved. I also love to answer some of your questions. So feel free to comment here and maybe I will answer your question in the video😉See you soon

Another option would be to move that new Wireless access point. Being against that wall and having it surrounded by conduit and furniture will affect its range too.

The way you had your router hanging on the wall, the built-in 1/4 wave antenna was placed horizontally and it was directing its RF energy into the attic and cellar rather than into the room. Just mounting the router in a horizontal position (rather than hanging it on the wall) would provide you with better coverage.

The actual improvement you are seeing is because you rotated the antenna 90 degrees. As you pointed out in your sketches an antenna radiates the signal to the side and not out of the top. Before you were basically relying on catching reflections while with the new antennas you are receiving the signal. And wherever possible you should make sure that the receiving antenna is parallel to your sender (for instance with WiFi sticks)

Watch out when you unplug the antenna when the router is operational: The built-in amplifier can be overloaded and die when the (normally 50ohm) load/impedance go to infinity. Especially true for internal antennas that are not expected to be removed

The first antenna (the supposed quarter eave half dipole) is not used for wiifi. Its the DECT antenna for the dect base station functionality of the router. You can see its next to the dialog sc14445 IC which is a fully inegrated DECT transciever.

Best Solution: PoE-Powered Access-Points. Just place them where you need them (eg. where you have the most clients). Nice bonus being that when a new Standard comes out (like 6E) you can just move the old AP's to other rooms and move the new AP's in their place.

Best solution (but a little inconvenient at first) is to move the wifi router to the centre of your home, perhaps in the ceiling cavity. Your devices will never be more than half the diagonal distance to a corner away from the router.

Having a better antenna might also get you into trouble. The maximum legal power is not the power out of the amplifier, but the EIRP. The EIRP takes into account the gain of the antenna (how much better it is) in addition to the power. For instance if you have a power of 10 mW and an antenna gain of 10, then your EIRP is 100 mW (the maximum for 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi). So increasing the gain of your antenna without reducing your transmitted power should still be illegal. It's actually logical, otherwise you could use a giant dish as Wi-Fi antenna and potentially jam any device in its aperture.

Building antennas without an analyzer, especially at these frequencies can be difficult. Another thing you can try is to move the antennas to a better position with some good coax cable.

I was expecting you to also put a reflector behind the antenna. Great video, nice explanation!

Instead of additional routers or repeaters, you want to separate the router and access point functionality. You can place access points where you need them, while the router does packet routing, and can be placed anywhere. Several companies offer equipment like this; I use Ubiquiti. I have a lot of IoT (really LAN of Things); 150 devices on WiFi. One router (Edgerouter 6P), and 4 access points (UAP-AC-M) keeps everything humming along.

I don't know if it's the same in Germany, but in the Czech Republic the transmission power should be measured as radiated power (including antenna gain). Wifi power should be 20dB after the antenna, not before. So if I'm not mistaken, It's still illegal because you're changing the antenna gain...

For the last antenna, it would be cool to see its S11 measurements from a VNA. This would help see what the resonant frequencies are to confirm it was tuned just right. Use anything from a inexpensive LiteVNA64 to Rhodhe & Schwarz equipment.

The best play is always to strategically place access points, but if you dont have a lot of Ethernet already ran through the walls this is the next best thing :)

9:52 Yagi-Uda antenna driven element(driven element usually is just a dipole antenna) needs to be insulated from the rest of the elements. Try building antenna from 2mm metal rods attached to 10mm PVC pipe with hot glue. Also, yagi antennas have very high directivity and are narrowband try checking signal strenght with 0, 1, 2 and 3 directors with antennas elements both being verically and horizontally and with using different channels.

10:42 these antennas work, but they are very sensitive to assembly, inaccuracies greatly affect their operation. Antennas of this type were even used on the Soviet lunar rover

Best is to use multiple WiFi access points throughout the house. Then use the isp as a modem/router. I have 5 WAP in my house. Two outside, one middle of basement and two at opposite ends of the house in the corner with reflectors.

There are not only limits to maximum transmit power, but also Effective radiated power, so you are also not allowed to simply hook up a directional antenna as that might raise your EIRP in that direction too high. Whilst using different antennas might feel good, afaik you might just kill your MIMO capabilities, crippling your speeds even though your signal strength is better because the communication falls back to less channels. And of course you can move the router to a better location with less things in the way like a more central location and an orientation which matches the antennas radiation pattern (though that is typically already good) These consumer routers are a good all-in-one-package housing the modem (to translate fibre to electrical), the access-point (the wifi-module) and internal services (routing, dns, ..) in a neat package, but this might not be desirable in all cases. You could place the modem (like your current router) where your fibre comes into the house and then run ethernet to a separate access-point in a more central location, or even have multiple access-points for better coverage. Without running wires, you can use mesh-APs, though they usually cost quite a bit more and are prone to interference and wireless limitations themselves (but usually work quite well in typical setups)

Its always a joy seeing your uploads on Sundays! Stay Creative! -From Texas

dammit i thought the title said "I tried OVERPOWERING my Wife!" :D

I've had about 5 dB improvement in this kind of situation by putting aluminium mesh a few centimetres behind the router. That way the signal interferes constructively with the forward transmitted signal and reflects back into your living space, and greatly lowers any signal towards neighbors. It doesn't sound like much, but 5 dB can make the difference between it working well and working badly. It's particularly good if you're using wireless bridging because you can get 5 dB gain at each end.

Thanks for this video. I always wonder how much impact the antenna orientation has on access points with external antennas. As yours has originally internal antennas and is wall mounted i wonder if there is any difference by rotating the router by 90 degrees vertically and/or horizontally?

Glad you mentioned mesh routers at the end. I like you, used to mess with amps and antennas to increase throughput. However, ever since getting the EERO mesh modules, I'm blown away at their performance. Especially using the LAN jack on a mesh pod. The speed is amazing.

Hi, as usual a great video, but being an IT guy I would strongly recommend separating router from the access point and build a small mesh setup. There are many available that are many ready solutions that aren't that expensive but will kill any "consumer" Wi-Fi router out there. I personally use Ubiquiti but as I said, there are many solutions. Hetamapping and meshing is a basic function for such solutions and believe me, having a great life-long support for a set of devices, single SSID for multi-bank networks, multiple vlans... I do know that it would not suit your video format, but check it out for home use :).

I’d be interested to see if laying the router down flat would make any difference given that the simple antenna would radiate outwards across the flat instead of up and down. Also, consider moving the wifi to the centre of your flat. :)

The big problem I noticed with the antenna is that you need to isolate the copper elements from the rod, otherwise it will seriously affect your performance. That's why Yagi antenna elements are insulated from everything else (except the feed line).

I love your content. Keep it up!

Great Video! Just a quick hint: The improvement in your signal strength in your maps ( 7:27 ) should be given in dB, not in dBm.

You've got a million options here to improve the WiFi. 1. Ask your ISP to move the optical fiber to an inner wall on the house, preferably somewhere in the middle of the floor-plan instead of the far wall. 2. If they say no, look into getting an optical fiber male to female extension and move the Fritzbox yourself to the middle of the floor-plan. 3. Put the Fritzebox into Full Bridge mode, and use a decent router with REAL antennas like a Netgear RAXE500. 4. Do the same as 3, but use a long Ethernet cable, and install a new router in the middle of the floor-plan with the Fritzbox in Full Bridge mode.

Hello, many years ago I tried several DIY alternatives but the only ones that really worked for me until today are the Panel antennas, try and see and if purchased, much better. Thank you for your videos, special greetings from Honduras.

I once built a unidirectional bi-quad wifi antenna with a CD as reflector. It worked great! Was for 2.4 GHz but should be adjustable to 5 GHz easily.

If I can't use the router software to 'improve' the signal (via changing channels to less crowded ones, etc) then I block off the signal going to areas with use of aluminium foil. An added benefit is that you can shape the foil sheets into vaguely parabolic shapes, enabling the direction the wifi signal to where it is needed. Old-school

Finally a wifi improvement video that isn't all just in the routers settings in the browser!!! Thank you for the inspiration for my next electronics project!! Great stuff GreatScott!

Mounting your WiFi AP near the ceiling sometimes helps as typically there are less objects/furniture to absorb or reflect signals compared to counter/ground level. Another thing to consider is that a walls apparent thickness increases as the beam angle moves away from perpendicular. I also find that manual channel allocation can be handy, especially if you can split you WiFi up onto different Access Points or networks. I use this for WiFi mesh devices as the high amount of traffic can interfere with regular WiFi use.

I had the same problem for a long time but everything changed after 802.11 k/v/r became available in the consumer grade hardware. This technology allows devices to roam between APs. Works like a charm and roaming so fast that it happens without noticeable connection degradation. Personally I have some not very expensive Zyxel APs and can highly recommend them but many other manufacturers have this too.

Did you try to use a VNA to test the characteristics of your antenna ? Especially for the DIY one it might need a bit of tuning.

The 100mW is the maximum power that is being sent out of the antenna. So if you using an antenna that has a 4db instead of a 2db antenna that you’re still in violation. Nevertheless great video! And would like to see how difficult it would be to amplify the signal and its results.

Move it to the ceiling. Higher is better so i learned. Also there is a printable wifi booster antenna that actually really works good up to 100ft. I totally vouch for it.

Regarding 8:04, even harmonics of antennas actually present significantly higher characteristic impedances than 3rd order harmonics, meaning you can improve the signal even more by making a sort of fan dipole design

Hey Scott, Love your content!... You know, that construction for the directional antena is actually not optimal. I think this is called Yagi antena and those can be constructed in different ways but the "front" elements and the final bigger "Reflector" need to be isolated from the connected element... I'm no expert, but I followed the mesurements of an online calculator and built an antena with nylon standoffs and some virgin copper pcbs cut in circles... And I reached almost 200m in a single direction! I think you should try many different types of antenas, it could be a good future video... here some types: Cantenna (AKA horn antenna) (Built with a can and a small coper wire), Yagi (just like the one you built but isolated), bowtie (looks like it can be easily made with a bit of copper wire), BiQuad, Dipole, Helical ... I tried a Helical before, but it was a bit complicated for me...

Thats really practical. Dodgy WiFi is so frustrating!

I use a metal plate behind the router (pointing to the direction i want) and works fine. The idea is that the waves bounce to the metal plate and increase the strength of the signal. You can also use this to block or weaken the signal into a direction, for example to the outside world.

Since you say that’s the only spot to mount it, the most logical option would be to disable wifi on the ISP router and run ethernet to central access points on each floor. It definitely doesn’t have much family approval factor, having ethernet wires around the house, but it is a much better than mesh wifi, as that again depends on wifi signal strength to hop APs. My house is also built with thick concrete walls and 3 floors with a router on each. Took an afternoon to neatly route the additional cables along the house exterior and now it’s blissful. I get consistent 5ghz wifi everywhere. And as a bonus, I have 3 additional 1Gbps ethernet ports on the other floors for anything which might require a wire

Personnally i think since you use a Fritz!Box you could just use one of their repeaters they are great and use mesh. Also there are the Fritztender antennas which you could try.

you ideally want your router placement to be in the center of the area you want covered, and preferably elevated higher so less obstructions. And those Yagi style antenna that you can DIY are typically better suited for long range connectivity, provided you have line of sight and the Fresnel zone is not too obstructed. I've tried my hand at making various long range antennae (yagi style, helical style, cantenna, dishes, pots, colanders, etc lots of things can make interesting antenna) for use in a local Wireless User Group, most had a pretty solid connection going 8KM to a local node. Another good example for those antenna are to link buildings on your property that you cant run a cable to, I took the lazy approach for my mom's cottage and put outdoor mikrotik radios on the buildings. Nice video, definitely at least see to the router placement, or if you cant move it then disable it and put a better access point centrally with a cable to it for best results

I really enjoyed this video. I've been experimenting with fractal antennas for digital TV reception. I got rid of Ziply cable, but would like to receive some local channels. I live in a semi-rural location, and TV towers are behind hills. The transition from analog to digital should have included paying for installing repeaters! I think there are some fractal WiFi antenna designs too.

I built one of those "Russian" Wi-Fi beam antennas when I moved into a temporary apartment about a 1/4 mile from my in-law's house. My intention was to tap off their Wi-Fi network for internet services so I didn't have to pay an ISP to run fiber up to an apartment that I was going to leave in for a few months. It was about twice as long as the one in the video and made of sheet metal that I had cut out of an empty unused paint can. I then taped it on the end of a laundry pole and positioned it as high above my top floor balcony as I could. It worked well enough to read their SSID but not well enough for my laptop to connect to it. I think my laundry pole wasn't long enough to get the antenna over my building's roof ridge and that got in the way of the line-of-sight signal. But I proved that the concept was sound. It used to be fun to roam the streets with such an antenna looking for Wi-Fi stations that people didn't bother to lock, but today's routers pretty much now all come with WPA2 already configured.

You should also consider testing with two dipole antennas (like you already have in this video) but with them being perpendicular at a 90 degree angle as the two radios experience high crosstalk when they both are in the same configuration. Since the router has 2 antennas but the physical world has 3 axis (x,y,z), you may have to experiment with 3 different placement configurations of the two antennas.

For best performance, a 1/4 wavelength antenna needs a ground plane to present as a mirror, not so different than when you put a 1/4 wave antenna ontop of a mirror visually the antenna and mirror together look like and operate like a 1/2 wavelength antenna. With the largest visual profile of the antenna and and reflection in ground plane being the same angle with the largest db gain.

Thanks for the video! To put it bluntly: the measure that really helps the most are repeaters that are connected to the router via cable. Connecting external directional antennas is prohibited by law in most countries. The idea with amplifiers cannot work because you would have to amplify both directions. And then unfortunately there are a lot of fake videos about supposedly great WiFi antennas that don't work. In order to make a functioning antenna, you have to take a few more things into account anyway. In your case, a metal foil on the wall behind the router could help a little. On the one hand, this directs some transmission energy towards your apartment. And on the other hand, your neighbors' WiFi signals are somewhat shielded, which leads to a better signal-to-noise ratio and thus improves your uplink connection. By the way, the latter is usually underestimated.

7:44 Those antennas seem to be directional, as indicated by the “6dBi” in the product title. That would explain the 5-10 dBm improvement, and if the 2.4 GHz antenna was wrongly oriented, also its bad performance (or it could just be a bad antenna on that frequency, which would be par for the course from a 2€ antenna from Aliexpress anyways). In any case, the best solution to this problem is to run cables and place APs in the right spots. We tried solving this problem many times with repeaters and the like, but it was all very unstable. In the end we had cables ran (on the outside due to the construction of the building), and it works like a charm.

Kreosan's antenna (Yagi) must have worked better if the router were outside that room and even provided better signal strength since the Line of sight seems to be clear to the hall based on the house plan. But i suppose moving the router is not a great idea and the other antennas have already redeemed themselves.The Yagi might possibly work better if you are trying to connect to a network 2 houses away in the sky. But with the walls, it seems to hinder its capability. For fun it would've been nice if you could have done a test with both antenna types at the roof and see which one increases the range. But alas, that is not the motive behind the video. Great video as usual. 👍

A couple things to consider. 1. Max EIRP is inclusive of antenna gain, so you cannot add just any antenna to a wireless setup as you could be operating outside the legal limit. In New Zealand, the legal limit for 2.4GHz is 36dBm (4 Watts). 2. You can sacrifice bandwidth for range. By decreasing the channel bandwidth from 40MHz to 20MHz you will get better range due to receiver sensitivity. 3. I've seen advice to try a mesh setup but one thing to remember is you are again sacrificing bandwidth for range. Every hop in a mesh network divides the throughput in half. 4. Antenna arrangement is important. Each antenna has a radiating pattern. If it is a MIMO device, both antennas work together to provide the throughput and if different antenna are used on each port (like what you tried in your video) you will get reduced performance because the transceivers are using spatial multiplexing. If you want to use different antennas, you need to set the transceiver into spatial diversity (if it is supported). 5. For OFDM signals, at max transmit power, high MCS rates are not achievable and usually require a 6-7 dB of power backoff to achieve high modulation rates. 6. Consider Fresnel zone clearance. All the best.

FINALLLYYYY!!!! NEW great Scott Videowwww. MERRY CHRISTMAS ❤ FROM Philippines

Great video. I would love to see more videos about wifi connection, fiber optics and internet in general

WARNING! Do not play with antennas on your router, unless you know what you are doing, or you can easily burn your transmitter, and pretty much won't get any wifi, when it happens. Use this video only for educational purposes.

Here is a suggestion: Turn off the wifi functionality of your router and get a dedicated wifi access point such as the one from the Ubiquiti lineup. It alone will definitely improve your wifi experience.

Great video, thanks a lot!!! I have spoken to my wifi provider and tried to improve my connectivity tryout the house with no improvement. Your solution worked great for me as well!!! I wish you would explore Antennas in other videos. For example how to improve the reach from appliances like a baby phone, that have e emitter and receiver Antenas that work in Bothe directions. Interference must also play a role in the signal reach. Is there a way to minimize that? I live in a an apartment building in São Paulo Brasil. I bet interference is also an issue here.

Hi Scott...Nice job 🤙 . Could you please tell us how it effects health to increase the wifi signal level as you shown in the video?

Another thing to remember - sometimes, more power isn't better. If you're having issues and turning it up doesn't help, try turning it down. Signal reflection becomes a problem at higher power levels.

You should trash that entire Fritzbox and replace it with a fiber router from ubiquiti or mikrotik. Then add some access points. Those frizboxes are one of the worst things in existance.

I have used 12/13 cm bands for many years. Set dipoles with a reflector and one director in the open corner of each room and hall. Passive reflectors work well.

Hey Scott, what happens if you place those antennas at some hot spots all over the floors? I read somewhere that it causes some interference or bad thing to the signal. Btw, thank you for all the content all over the years! I'm from Costa Rica.

Ok, try this Scott. Keep the router where it is and use two sma extension cables (shielded) to raise the antennas higher. Say 1.75 to 2.25 meters above the floor. If you use a small metal angle bracket, it will give you a ground plane. I would recommend at least half the antenna length for distance from the wall. I.e 6 cm ant 3 cm spacing. Please note, i suggest this as it has worked for me in similar situations. Results will vary. Good luck. And happy holidays, mate.

I had similar issues, so I started reading how different characteristics affect Wi-Fi signal. The best thing to do is to get a router with high transmission power, low signal attenuation and number of chains (this is related to the number of devices that can connect to the router at the same time). From the ones, that I found only two were covering those criteria well - MikroTik and Linksys (Cisco). The budget option with most features - LTE, firewall, SMTP, FTP, NTP and so on; was the MikroTik hAP AC Lite. Now in your case, you might consider something a little bit more modern with meshing, just so you can increase the coverage and reduce the noise.

Great video. Thank you for the information.

Great video! The Fritz!Box is one of the best routers I owned, tough wifi has it's limits...in my parents house I've installed the router on the middle floor, and added one repeater on the first and top floor. If you want good coverage, this is the way to go, without much hassle and a reasonable expense. Btw the Fritz router has a very good coverage (mine is the 7530), to be fair, the signal is pretty good on the last floor, only on the first floor where walls are more "comolicated" is really required.

Thanks ! I'll do this for sure ! DO you know if Aluminum foil will help reflect it off the wall and back into the flat?

Great video. What if you soldered the 2 halves of the copper tape on each disk together so they are one?

One of the challenges, as well as avoiding breaking rules by boosting radiated power, is you also have to improve receive sensitivity, otherwise the receiving device hears the signal from the router but the router never properly hears the reply. Of course, the receiving device also needs to increase its transmit power. Perhaps mesh (as you hinted to) or even powerline extenders (if these devices are reliable now).

I’d go for a wifi6 mesh network. You can hard wire as many of the nodes as possible with 2.5G/10G (once needed) and PoE. That being said this video in it’s own is great!

Oh, and you can try the aluminum dish trick, it works really well in cases like yours, let us know the final setting, these are important matters, particular to each house layout.

I would've moved the router to the middle. Or added a cheap router as an extender on the other corner room.

Really neat homade booster! Better to just get a fast router and mount it at a location visible to most places. I chose my ceiling in the center and of my house mounted cables to the ceiling... perfect. Also make sure you arent on similar channels to neighbors. Higher noise on a channel means worse ping

Thanks for the video showing real-world WiFi reception. I liked that you included the DIY directional antenna, but I wish that you'd included a more proven directional antenna as well. It could have been DIY as well, but inexpensive options are available on AE or TMU. You don't want some 24dBi long-range model in your house as they create spot beams, but perhaps a 6-10dB model to shoot diagonally as you did with the DIY disk antenna. I realize that we won't see another video about this, but an established design with

Really interesting indeed, dude! Thanks for all the information! 😃 But yeah, there are people who make their own FPV antennas! It's a pretty deep rabbit hole to go through, but they swear it's worth it! Go figure. 😬 Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊 And happy holidays!

Yagi and other types of the same kind work really well when the distance is an obstructed >1km long distance. A friend of mine built one during university times to get wifi connectivity from the university and his house which was on a hill and had direct vision to his faculty. It worked very well after about 6 months of trial and error!

I've been wanting to do something like this with my wireless headset so this is really helpful! I mean, they should use 2.4 ghz so it shouldn't be much different right?

One gotcha is the devices being used on wifi. I could crank up my power to 100% and transmit pretty long distances. A low powered device such as an iPhone will pick up the wifi but does not have enough power to transmit back reliably. High power will also inject distortion into the transmitted signal. Proper wifi design is to transmit using low power and have a sufficient amount of access points. This way you get a reliable wifi network with consistent throughput over the entire area.

Reminds me of the "windsurfer" WiFi reflector I built many many years ago. I have no idea if its worked, but it was fun!

I've got a fritz box and I've always been unhappy with signal strength but haven't had the time to crack it open to see if it was easily modify able, looks like it is. Next project woo

I'm surprised you didnt try a simple reflector on those di-pole antennas. The instructions on how to make one has been around for easily over a decade and it does help with getting the signal in the direction you need.

I live in a small (36m2) apartment, and great wifi coverage from a single AP is one of the good things about it among the many bad things (like a lack of space for a proper desk, let alone a lab) :) I use a Ubiquiti UniFi AC PRO access point running at 17 and 20 dBm for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz respectively. However for your house, I would recommend turning off wifi in that FritzBox, and placing 2-3 separate APs across the house, all wired back to the router (or a switch, i.e. don't use mesh). The TP-Link EAP610 and EAP615 are great value for money, and can be used without a controller (but I recommend one if you're usinf multiple units).

Does it make sense to attach the router to the transfer point? Or is it better to position it in the hallway or living room? Some also want to hide the router in the power distribution box, behind metal doors. Looks good and doesn't do much good. Ultimately, WLAN and DECT should be available throughout the house and not just in the storage room.

Are you unable to get a fiber coupler and just extend the ISP fiber and put it more centralized? Or get a mesh network setup? Or disable the wireless functionality of the router and get a good quality router that handles the wireless routing

I saw your build of the antenna, and would like to suggest using a nylon bolt for the shaft. a metal support with no electrical isolation between the elements of the antenna defeats most of the advantages of the rear reflector and the parasitic elements in front of the main radiator ( the disk you hook the signal wire to. ) I built a dipole version of that to receive UHF TV signals when I lived in a valley surrounded by tall hills as a kid, and hung it in the attic of my house. only way I could receive the closest channel that was a PBS station halfway across the state from me.

Hello Scott. Have you found other led lights like you did with the led bar years ago? It was an amazing project and I'm sure many people will like to have another one...

Reminds me of moving into an apartment without internet back in 2007. I bought a directional antenna that made it possible to access my neighbor's open wifi from a significant distance. It wasn't perfect, but at least I had internet access at all.

A waveguide antenna (cantenna) seems to work pretty well and is easy to construct. If you want to cheat, a third party AP such as unifi UAP would also offer quite an improvement.

what a great video. I've learned lots of new thigs about Wi-Fi routers while watching it

Part of my job is fixing network issues in peoples homes so I've gained some experience over the years. Upgrading the antennas is something I've tried around 10 years ago and it *does* work, however it seems that it only makes a difference when you have line of sight to the access point. As soon as there are any objects and ofc walls in the way you can can just as well stick to the original antennas. they work just as good or most of the time better than what you could come up with. The easiest advice I can give everyone is to place the Router up high in the room and do not mount it on a wall. you could build a little shelf on the wall for it to sit on. the goal is to make the radio waves travel through the fewest objects possible. Also place it so the radio waves don't have to travel across an entire wall but instead mostly straight through it. you can yield around 10-30% better reception that way. but in the end... even the best router will not be able to provide good wifi connections behind 2-3 walls... so you need to place another access point in your home. If you can find any way to do it... please get an ethernet cable to it. you can place your next access point further away from the main one and it will not loose bandwith that way. If you have to work with WiFi repeater... don't use too many of them. just get a proper one (Tri-band if possible) and go from there. yes they can get expensive but it doesn't help to place a lot of junk in your rooms that doesn't fit your routers wifi standard or antenna configuration. do not place it too far away from the main router. If the connection to the repeater is weak the bandwith will go down significantly.

My dad is also an engineer and that floor plan looked so amazingly engineer-y that it just tingled my brain-bits

Did you test the SWR of you DIY antenna? Like from Spain!

Mesh repeaters are an option but going pure mesh with wired access points are the best! Cool project though 😀

is that a fritzBox 7590? never had a problem with ours at home here in Italy, and also use the older 7490 as an extender. We may have the older WiFi5 version tho, you may have the newer WiFi 6 revision that does more beamforming and weird stuff that may or may not work well

What you want is a colinear antenna. They're simple to build and have omnidirectional gain in the horizontal plane. Basically the RF field looks like a squished toroid shape. However, as someone else mentioned, if you want to stay legal then you need to be careful about not only the transmit power but also the gain of the antenna.

I had similar problems in our new house (which is around the size of yours looking at your floor plans) and solved it in the end with a 5530 Fiber router and some older routers/ repeaters creating a mesh. In the end there are 5 mesh repeaters in my house and garden all connected to the Ethernet. So I can get the full speed of my 500mbit fibre connection over WiFi everywhere on my property. Is this full speed really needed everywhere one might ask. No. But nice that it is possible 😄

That older fritzbox router is pretty good device, one of the best you could have at the time in Ireland. It is very stable, no glitches, only downside is it only supports 2.4Ghz. I still use it, because any other I had from network providers sucked big time.

i love your video, is easy to understand, i learn a lot of thingh from you,. thank you ❤