Camp Pro Wifi Installed

[cwppwc]

Originally Posted by Retusps

Man, are you a night owl or what

Sometimes my mind just won't shut down when I'm contemplating new mods.

Originally Posted by Retusps

Do you know what reading you are getting outside your unit?

I haven't actually measured outside but my friends in the next campsite 30' away were able to login to our router from inside their 5th wheel after I gave them the password.

[bleese]

What diameter hole is on top of your bracket?

[cwppwc]

If I remember right, it was 7/8". Hope that helps.

[bleese]

[bleese]

Originally Posted by bleese

Attachment 133118Attachment 133119

Here is another option for installing the Alfa WiFi Camp Pro. I did not have the usual crank up antenna so I had to come up with another option. As a former boater, I thought of the antenna base I had on my boat. I spend a few bucks on pvc pipe and cap to form the base. I struggled for a month about drilling a hole in my roof but it turn out simple. My Forester 3011ds has a cabinet above the door for electronics. I drilled a pilot hole up from the cabinet top and through the roof. I then used a 3/4 inch hole saw down through the roof using the pilot hole. Worked out great and I can't see any way the roof will leak.

[bleese]

Originally Posted by bleese

Here is another option for installing the Alfa WiFi Camp Pro. I did not have the usual crank up antenna so I had to come up with another option. As a former boater, I thought of the antenna base I had on my boat. I spent a few bucks on pvc pipe and cap to form the base. I struggled for a month about drilling a hole in my roof but it turn out simple. My Forester 3011ds has a cabinet above the door for electronics. I drilled a pilot hole up from the cabinet top and through the roof. I then used a 3/4 inch hole saw down through the roof using the pilot hole. Worked out great and I can't see any way the roof will leak.

Hope this helps someone.

[CZNEDY]

Good idea and the install looks good. Nice rv storage facility Bleese. Is it in Ft. Myers?

[JeffnBessIllinois]

Speedtest wifi test

[bleese]

Originally Posted by CZNEDY

Good idea and the install looks good. Nice rv storage facility Bleese. Is it in Ft. Myers?

Thanks, I highly recommend the storage facility.

[CZNEDY]

Nice. I have my DYNAMAX in N. Fort Myers in the winter at Park 720. Which storage facility is your at? I would like to check it out. Is it the one on Alico?

[bleese]

Originally Posted by CZNEDY

Nice. I have my DYNAMAX in N. Fort Myers in the winter at Park 720. Which storage facility is your at? I would like to check it out. Is it the one on Alico?

Cuzin's is on Plantation just off of Colonial about a mile from I75. I kept my boat at Park 720. Both are quite similar but Cuzin's is all covered. No uncovered like Park 720. 2 wash bays, dump station, nice rest room and a huge ice machine. I liked them both but Cuzin's is my fav. And it is much closer to our house.

[CZNEDY]

I think I know the place. I'll have to check it out. Just flew back down here this morning and heading home with the RV on Thursday.

[bleese]

Originally Posted by CZNEDY

I think I know the place. I'll have to check it out. Just flew back down here this morning and heading home with the RV on Thursday.

We are heading north in the RV also on Thursday. 2 months in PA.

[CZNEDY]

Well, have a safe trip. Maybe we will see you on the road some day soon. We are not too far away from you. We are at colonial country club off of colonial and treeline

[emm-dee]

Originally Posted by JeffnBessIllinois

Speedtest wifi test

Was at the Bristol speedway last week where the CampPro found 17 networks. iPhone could only see four and droid phone found three. Of course all were passworded. The CG (best signal) provided the password for their network. Connection direct to their network showed a Speedtest number of six MBPS. Using the CampPro connection to the same network showed nine MBPS. However, by Wednesday when the CG started filling up and who knows how many people were connected the speeds dropped to 0.53/0.91. I gave up and just switched to AT&T LTE hotspot on the iPhone where it showed 72 MBPS.

For whatever reason the CampPro only showed 25 MBPS when connected through the iPhone.

[CZNEDY]

Originally Posted by bleese

We are heading north in the RV also on Thursday. 2 months in PA.

I called them today. Much closer to our house. Thanks for the info. Maybe we will see you on the road. We are heading up thru GA and then off to 81 somehow, just not sure yet. Gonna wing it. Had a plan, plan changed, then changed again and now we are gonna wing it.

[njfishing]

I got the Wifi Camp pro programmed and set it up in my home.

Set up was a little cumbersome but not too bad. You need to connect the wireless router with the cable provided in the kit to the network connection jack on your computer in order to configure it.... A little cryptic but it's only a one time set up process. From then on you can change settings or connect other wifi networks through your tablet or phone over wifi.

Got it all connected to my home's wifi network and then connected my iphone to Camp Pro... I then ran a speed test on my phone and was getting 2.42 MBPS on the download side and my upload speed was 15.6 MBPS.... Not good so I thought maybe my home network was slow.... Did another test bypassing the Camp Pro and connecting directly to my home wifi network and got 156 MBPS download and 36.3 on the upload. I then moved the Camp antenna and router to other parts of my home thinking having the antennas so close to one and other there might be some interference. If did improve some but the best I could get was around 10 MBPS.

I assumed there would be some speed degradation but nothing like that so I figured maybe I did something wrong configuring it. I called Custom Cables and spoke to Mike their customer support who said it was a known issue, others were complaining of the speed loss, the manufacturer was aware of it and were working a firmware update but did not know when that was going to happen. If I wanted to I could return it now or try and wait for the update since I had 90 days to return it per the Amazon return policy.

Not sure what I'm going to do...

I did pick up more wifi networks then before and managed to connected to an open optonline wifi hotspot I was not able to connect to before and got around 10 MBPS.

I get faster speeds on my iphone using it as a hot spot and have an unlimited data plan. It is much more ubiquitous so I likely use it in more places and I don't have to go through the trouble of installing all the camp pro gear in my camper. I can however see how the Camp Pro would help if you are in a remote area with no cell signal but the campground has wifi but you can't get it at your site or have to go to the office to use it. Slow wifi is better then no wifi and the convenience might be worth it.

If any of you have used the the Wifi Camp Pro, I would be interested in your feed back and what speeds you've managed.

[OYO]

njfishing got me curious. I too just completed setup of my camp pro so I ran some tests.

-The bottom five are the camp pro (me positioned near camp pro antenna)

-The middle five are my home Wi-Fi (me positioned near camp pro antenna)

-The top five are a Netgear EX-6100 extender I use in my home (me positioned near said extender)

The extender is closer to the home WiFi than the camp pro.

The extender and the camp pro seem to have similar results. I think you're always going to get some degradation with this sort of technology.

Also, the camp pro picks up a bunch more of my neighbors signals than the Netgear.

All in all I'd say it is serviceable.

[emm-dee]

My experience has been seeing a speed reduction of about 20%. Most of the time that’s not a problem because the normal lowest speed I see is 5 mbps. That’s plenty fast enough to view Netflix, Xfinity, Apple TV or similar without any buffering.

Most of the time I connect to the AT&T Mobley. The Mobley has a five device connected limit so by having one of those devices being the CampPro I have enough available connections to disregard that limit. And, the Mobley $20 plan has unlimited data (I’ve used more than 125 gig per month a few times).

The CampPro antenna is mounted on top of a PVC pipe (2 eight foot sections) which is tie-wrapped to the toyhauler door hinge. That method places the antenna about 7-8 feet above the top of the RV. The setup takes about five minutes or less to complete. It’s not unusual to see 20 or more Wi-Fi networks and it’s amazing to see the number of smartphones broadcasting via their hotspot feature. But, most of those networks are useless to me because they are password protected (as they should be).

Combining the Mobley, CampPro and iPhone systems I’m able to almost always have my devices connected without worrying about data limits.

As to CampPro limits, my closest neighbor (¼ mile away) connects to my home 150 mbps Xfinity internet and shows about 12-15 mbps speeds. I am the last house on my road to have a cable connection so his only option is DSL, which is much slower than the CampPro system.

[njfishing]

Thanks for that emm and OYO...

Based on my experience and the both of yours, looks like no matter how fast the wifi network you are connecting to is, the fastest you are going to get from the Camp Pro is 10-15 MBPS. Not that great but better then nothing, right?

However, most campground wifi networks are slow to begin with so real world speed can be a lot slower then we are experiencing connect to our home and neighborhood networks.

The tech support people from the company I bought mine from from said the Camp Pro tech people are aware of the issue are and supposedly working on a firmware update.... I guess that could help some.