I shouldve taken a picture for you guys this weekend. If I remember, Ill take one next weekend.
I tried the pringles can and picked up a local secure network, but reception was shotty, and kept cutting out. I wanted an optimumwifi hotspo , and the closest one was just over a mile away.
Since I work at a recycling center on the weekends, I had pretty much everything lying around, except for the wifi dongle. So, I bought a wifi dongle and grabbed myself 3 small tin Foldger's cans, and cut the bottoms out of two of them. I assembled them to resemble a "bazooka". At the bottom of the "bazooka", I had to cut a hole for the dongle. And in order to get perfect reception, the hole has to be cut at a certain distance from the bottom for the wavelength. There is calculators out there based on the length and diameter of the cantenna. Its usually around 1 inch from the bottom. I inserted the dongle, which was attached to a USB Cable, attached the cantenna to a tripod (which was also lying around), and got 3 out of 5 bars from the optimumwifi hotspot. Bazinga
It wasn't good enough though, because when it rained or the cloud cover was low and dense, reception was shotty. So, I basically made a mini cantenna with just one foldgers can, and assembled it to a feedhorn on an old Dish network satellite dish (also lying around at my job) and service has been flawless 95% of the time
. Though, I have it set up so that the dish is set up outside, and that I can remove the feedhorn easily so the dongle doesn't succumb to the outdoor elements.