Laser Internet

You, of course, will be mounting a mirror on the mountain, right?

And some provision to keep the mirror clean and dry?

Other wise, too much difussion for any coherent signal.

I can't speak to the penetration characteristics of lasers through clouds, nor the FAA rules of lasers and aircraft flying through same.

My experience is as an astronomer, and I don't know of any visible wavelengths that will slice through fog or clouds. In fact, for public demonstrations green lasers are commonly used to point out particular stars because the green wavelength is back-scattered very well, making the laser beam visible for use as a pointer -- more so in the summer when the air is more humid. On the other hand, radio astronomers don't have that problem; they can work even with overcast skies. I think your best bet would be some radio wavelength.

Another option might be infrared laser diodes. Ones in the 1600 nanometer range are available, and the atmosphere is fairly transparent in this wavelength region. I didn't find any info on the transparency of clouds in this wavelength range, though.

Follow up to my response above.

I was thinking you might bounce the IR signal off the mountaintop snow and read the scattered signal using small telescopes in front of your IR sensors -- so you would not need to place a mirror near the top of the mountain. Unfortunately, the report in the link below shows that the reflectivity of snow is poor in the near infrared, so a ~ 1600 nm laser diode would not work this way. You would need some kind of reflective surface. Maybe not a 'mirror' per se, but something that is reflective in the near infrared. I seem to recall reading once that ordinary cardboard is reflective in the near infrared.

http://www.civil.utah.edu/~cv5450/Remote/AVIRIS/optics.html

To tackle as you describe you'd need to drop a couple frequency bands down to RF but while that would give you a detectable signal, actually encoding same and getting anything but garble would be a challenge and very unlikely at data rates to support internet access.

Two possibilities to your solution:

One - mount a microwave receiver on the far side of the obscuring mountain, cabled to a transmitter on your side - solar panel power it. Surprisingly affordable, but will offer speeds that allow commercializing it to your neighbors to help defray.

Two - is sort of related in that it depends on sharing costs with neighbors, set up your own satellite down-link. Hughs has a functional satellite service competitive in cost for individuals users, and offers a commercial service you could sell to your neighbors.

Hughs Most of their business now is RV and truck internet over a 12" dish.

Used to be one of many satellite manufacturers.

Towers and relays are sold separate unless you have a large checkbook I'd use trees.

They are hard to track down, but a lot of companies sprang up servicing exactly your problem with 12" microwave tech. by mounting the antenna on your chimney and pointing a ground based transmitter at you.

Mostly seems to have been superseded by cheap (relative term) satellite access.

We are using standard issue off the shelf Wireless Access Point units from Linksys and Netgear. One WAP54G at each end with a simple software update to boost the output to its full capacity and another one programmed to work in repeater mode in the middle.

As far as directional antenna go you can get some high gain highly directional ones on eBay for reasonable prices.

One of our dishes can do a 36 M/S connection to a common laptop internal wireless card from over half a mile!

Ideally I would recommend buying an external WiFi connection devices that can connect to your USB port and antenna so that you can have an actual signal strength reading as you are aiming them.

A few degrees off on just one can mean the difference between a 24+ M/S link between dishes in heavy fog and a near zero link in anything but clear sky.

As far as I know its all available online for free and some of it comes directly from the manufactures sites.

Just find a high school kid that knows about basic wireless internet networking and you are set to go!

You can use a passive directed re-radiation method.

All you need is a friend with a high gain wi-fi yagi to aim at the peak, which has two more of these yagis, one to receive and one to transmit and you on the ground on the other side of the mountain.

make a yagi

use these or similar yagis. If you have power on top of the mountain, you can add a gain block, just make sure it is bidirectional

One Yagi - google has more or make one from Google

Two words here: Link Budget.

If you don't know what this is then your chances of success are slim to none.

It is not impossible to implement a personal repeater system over these distances but the total cost and the logistics involved are not suited to individuals.

The low power laser, crude detection and imperfect reflector proposition tabled by the OP won't work.

Satellite internet connection is available on every continent.

Specifically for Chile see http://www.wafa.ae/en/vsat/products/hx/SouthAmerica/satellite-internet-in-Chile.aspx

If you have the resources you may even consider a micro(co-op) ISP, using this satellite backhaul, and share it with your community.

Satellite internet starts at $150/month, with phone line command link. Bidirectional satellite costs even more.

With home made yagis and a solar powered gain block you can make a good link for $100 or so. purchased yagis will give better gain. As a test point a home made Wifi yagi at the top of the hill and then take a laptop with a wifi card you can attache to another home made yagi up there and see if it works. Then go from there.

Exactly!!! And that is only for 300 kilo BITS (That is only 37.5 kilobytes) per second!! BURST!! For 150 dollars/month! Imagine how much speed you could get for the same price using the internet in town.

The total all inclusive cost is a lot, lot more than $100. Reality 101.

Even if I buy the antennas new it will cost me less than $500. I already have the stuff on hand to build a solar power supply so the cost of that is not an issue. Even if my internet in town cost me $50 per month, I would save $1000 in 10 months assuming that satelite internet of comparable speed costs me $150/month! As I have shown, $1000 is plenty of money to do the job!

You'd better hope that no one accidentally looks at your laser beam and fries their eyes.

You cannot make a go of the laser idea. Technically too complex to start with.

Internet connection implies two way communication. The upload (from you) may be done over regular phone line, and be very slow. But download (to you) need real speed. All that means really, that you need a real repeater on the mountain, and that, with building and power source is really, really expensive.

IF, and that is a big IF, the distances are small, only the geography is unlucky, a 10 meter long cable can serve as a sort of mirror for a Wifi link.

On the other hand, I would much rather explore the putting of DSL modems on the landline phones. They are always accessible, proven technology. Do not affect normal phone operation. The normal phone's copper pair carries the signal, at higher frequencies, all the time. One time expenditure.

No phone line either! We only have cell phone and that thanks to a booster.

There is no Internet access apart from 3G at Campodogs' locale. DSL then is not an option. Tell us Campodog, how many others are there where you live (or work)? How many of them do you reckon would enjoy an Internet connection?

Lots of them would enjoy an internet connection! I would have to point another yagi antenna in their direction. They are to far away to bury a cable. It still is a good idea, though. Also, unless I had a bigger transmitter and a antenna that was less directional, I could only send internet to one of them at a time.

You can do a wifi repeater tower on the mountain, if you can access a spot on the mountain where you can see your home AND a location in the city where you want to get your signal from.

I set up a local wifi internet service in my area since we are very rural so the big service providers don't want to bother with us because there aren't enough people living here to make it pay.

One of our repeater links is 22 miles with 350mW amplifiers and suitable antennas, on the license-free 5.8 GHz band. Its been a rock-solid link.

Our repeater towers consists of two reject 35' power poles for each repeater site--one for the radios and one for solar panels. We bury the battery box in the ground to avoid damage from frost and vandals.

The Wifi gear is all MikroTik...Google them--they make good, reliable gear and it's inexpensive--and available all over the world. The complete wifi gear on the repeater will cost you about $200. Of course, you will also need equipment at the opposite end of of each link which will cost you about $150 per side. The solar panels, solar charger and batteries will cost a couple of thousand $, depending on what you can expect for sunshine in the dead of winter on the mountain. The balance, for getting the poles, installing them, and making up a battery box, solar panel mounting frames, and electrical box for the solar charger is another $grand or so.

I've heard of bouncing radio signals off of mountain faces but can't give you any specifics. There is some info on Google. You would be using highly directional antennas, fairly low frequencies and lots of power because your mirror is imperfect. Probably not easily implemented unless you are an EE or a Ham radio type and willing to spend time experimenting.

Jon.

Yeah! Like how ham geeks bounce their radio signals off the moon.

connect your internet thru satellite connection..

this company http://www.mybluedish.com/ $49.95 per month.

That

this company

http://www.mybluedish.com/ $49.95 per month.

sounds like it is a good deal.

I see they have caps and are slower than DSL, but still a lot better than dialup

I signed up for into and got this.

""Dear Bill,

Thank you for your interest in our satellite Internet services. Currently in the area we do have service available. Call us at 877-316-1892 now to get:

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Please give us a call at 877-316-1892 or reply to this email and we will be happy to go over all the details and answer any questions you may have about our services. We look forward to providing you with years of outstanding high-speed Internet!


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The OP is in Chile...

From Wild Blue:

"If you are in the 48 continental United States and have a clear view of the southern sky, you can receive WildBlue satellite broadband."

Perhaps a Maser(microwave) might work better in your environment .... but it will still need a purpose designed reflector.

Laser or microwave don't do squat IF someone else owns that mountain and the OP has no LEGAL rights or permission to set up equipment there.

All the technical solutions in the world won't help if the legal beagle issues aren't solved first.....I know where I stand on this one since I've been involved in cell tower and microwave tower installations (structural and site design) for the past 15 years or so + sat on a NYS County Planning Board, as well as a Village Planning Board, where I've had to deal with siting applications for both.

Y'all missed the boat on this one guys! LOL

GO SATELLITE DISH IF AFFORDABLE!!!!!! [I have the Dish Network for cable TV but am considering Hughes Net for satellite ISP]/

We didn't all miss the boat.

That is part of the total cost and logistics.

Permits, leases, licences, bribes, beers, food and women.

None of it is free

...and you're not even close to start building it yet.

This company looks pretty cool, you buy the receiver for $475, and buy as much time as you want or need...With time management this could be quite reasonable...Yes good for Chile..

http://www.tempestcom.com/services/satrbgan_plans.aspx

I'm afraid $45,000 per year is too much to pay.