SUGGESTION: Range Booster Unit

[Jeff Jones]

Would it be possible to design a range booster or repeater unit that runs on a AA battery or two? 

I have some gates and a shed with a small hill in the way. And the signal fails a couple hundred feet short of the locations. If there was a waterproof battery powered repeater, I would love that.

[Dave Fischer]

[I admittedly don't own any of these devices, but have had an interest in them for a while]

Are the units completely sealed in epoxy or can they be pried open and tinkered with?  Perhaps a pair of lithium AA batteries for more robust power coupled with a directional antenna hacked into the board would work.

[Jeff Jones]

They are not sealed in epoxy, but adding a custom antenna is beyond me, and I want the sensor to be compact, not to mention having to do it 3 times. I would want a bulky repeater to be elsewhere on the property out of the way.

If the receiver was PoE powered, that might allow me to mount it up high somewhere, but so far that suggestion hasn't happened yet. That was a couple years ago so either the designers don't see it being worth the effort or they don't know know. 

[Carlos Alvarez]

You can easily PoE power the receiver.  In fact, I have way too many PoE to USB adapters laying around, so if you send me an address, I'll mail you one.  They take an ethernet PoE in, and have a micro USB and ethernet output.  It's just that easy, plug and play.

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[Jeff Jones]

Thanks for the offer, but I have no problem just buying one from Amazon.

I have seen those PoE to USB adapters on Amazon before and considered trying that. It seemed like it would bump the clutter up too much and I'd have to do something gaudy to make it work.

My house has a couple convenient outdoor junction boxes up near the roof under the eves (for CCTV cameras or whatever) and I can cram a receiver inside the junction box. But I don't think I can get a USB converter in there with it. So I would likely have to come up with an external waterproof housing and mount it on the outside somewhere. Seemed like more trouble and potential gaudiness than I wanted to tackle for now.

[Carlos Alvarez]

Sorry, but it seems like you're asking for a lot of effort from the device side just to avoid a pretty small effort on your part.  Outdoor-rated in-use electrical boxes are cheap and easy to install.  It will just screw on to your junction box, and can accommodate both devices.  You'd just position the receiver with the antenna sticking out from one of the in-use cord slots.  If you were stuffing a receiver inside the junction box, you'd still have to leave the antenna sticking out.

Thinking through this gave me an idea for a location to improve my own coverage.

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[Jeff Jones]

This is what is on my house. I'm not sure that can be extended in any meaningful way, and yes part of the antenna would probably have to stick out the wire port.

https://www.amazon.com/Arlington-DBVS1W-1-Recessed-Construction-Vertical/dp/B004K1G0ZO/

[Carlos Alvarez]

That's interesting, and looks useful, thanks for the link.  Unfortunately it looks like you couldn't put an outdoor box on it, I was thinking they were standard in-wall junctions, sorry.  The PoE adapters I have are about as long as an outlet cover, so they might not fit in there at all.  I have seen one that is a small cube that would fit, but don't know the brand/source.