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PolicyGuy

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#323190 4-Nov-2025 16:34
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My garage is a stand-alone structure about 20m from my house and has next to no Wi-Fi coverage a.t.m., but I want to have access to my home LAN in the garage.

 

The garage is a very conventional structure of the "Versatile" type (but not that brand AFAIK) with a light timber frame and a galvanised steel 'weatherboard look' exterior and a long-run tin roof. There are two windows, neither particularly generously sized - it's a garage! The design makes it quite an effective Faraday Cage, with very limited penetration of any** RF.

 

My existing LAN features a Spark Huawei router / WAP at one end of the house and a Ubiquiti UniFi Mesh AC1200 WAP towards the other end, much nearer the garage. You can't really 'see' either WAP from inside the garage.

 

The garage power supply is on a separate sub-main with its own circuit breaker on the main board.
The isolation between the garage supply and the house is sufficient to make a mains power-line LAN extender not work - I have tried that. Sigh.
The garage power supply is direct buried, so there's no duct to pull / push a cable / fibre through.
I could run an aerial cable, but that would be ugly and the internal run at the house end would be really quite complicated.

 

I'm really looking for a wireless solution.
Can I buy something that would have an antenna outside the garage to pick up the UniFi signal and another antenna inside the garage to broadcast the Wi-Fi? I've looked on the Go Wireless web site, and realise I know just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to work out what to buy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

** I can listen to RNZ on 567 MHz AM, but the same station on 101.x MHz FM is too crackly to be worth listening to.
     Wi-Fi on 2.4 or 5 GHz really doesn't want to get in from the house.


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wellygary
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  #3430905 4-Nov-2025 16:46
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"Can I buy something that would have an antenna outside the garage to pick up the UniFi signal and another antenna inside the garage to broadcast the Wi-Fi?"

 

 

 

Best to look at a specific "point to point" bridge,  would be ideal if you could run ethernet to the house end as then you get a rock solid connection and PoE

 

Unifi make such gear 

 

https://ui.com/wifi/bridging

 

 




mentalinc
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  #3430906 4-Nov-2025 16:47
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Budget?

 

But a wireless point to point link probably the 'easiest' solution.





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Quic: https://account.quic.nz/refer/473833 R473833EQKIBX 


richms
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  #3430955 4-Nov-2025 17:03
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If the window faces the house, then another unifi AP in the window and configure wireless uplink would be the first and easiest step. You will want an AP out there anyway if you do add a bridge in.

 

If that's not good enough, but there is good coverage outside the garage from the house then one of the unifi device bridges would get that signal and let you connect it thru ethernet to the AP inside the garage. At that point you should probably add a swtich rather than using PoE injectors.

 

If thats not good enough then you would need the 2 ended bridge, and put them outside the buildings and pointed at each other. There are cheaper options than unifi for this, but if you go unifi you get it all in the same app for ease of troubleshooting.





Richard rich.ms

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