Wireless Cellular Amplifier

I'm trying to decide what electronic mods to do to my new Prius and one of the ones I'm considering is a wireless cellular amplifier. The idea is that when my phone sends a signal to the cell tower, the amplifier picks up the signal and sends an amplified version of that signal to the cell tower. In the other direction, it picks up the signal from the cell tower and sends an amplified version inside the car to the cell phone.

The particular product I'm looking at is called the Cascade In Vehicle Dual Band Wireless Amplifier. Here's a description:

http://www.maximumsignal.net/xcart/product...at=2&page=1

Does anyone have experience with this or a similar product?

I'm trying to answer two questions for myself:

1. Is it effective?

2. Where is the best place to mount it in a Prius, and can I get installation instructions?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Thanks, jmann, for the comments.

I went ahead and did this, using the Wilson amplifier jmann mentioned. I'm happy to report that it seems to work!

I ordered the Wilson wireless amplifier itself, which includes an internal antenna but not an external antenna, and I also ordered a Wilson magnetic antenna for the exterior. I was installing the Sirius Prius satellite radio package from Factory Interactive at the same time, and I used the antenna installation from that as a guide. As have many others on this site, I highly recommend the Factory Interactive install DVD for the Sirius Prius. It makes it very clear exactly what to do at every step.

I decided to install the cellular antenna on the left rear corner of the roof and the Sirius antenna on the right rear corner, to give at least a partially symmetric look. I had more than enough antenna cord for the Sirius antenna, but only just enough for the cellular antenna, which is why I put the Sirius antenna on the right. I ran the Sirius antenna cord above the weather stripping across the top of the hatchback, using a couple pieces of tape (fortunately, the Sirius Prius kit had all I needed for that), then ran both antenna wires over the weather stripping on the left top corner, where the Factory Interactive instructions recommend. I then ran both antenna wires as the Factory Interactive instructions say to down to the Sirius tuner in front of the left wheel well.

I chose to put the Wilson amplifier itself under the driver's seat, so I ran the rest of the cellular antenna wire along with the Sirius digital cable along the lower left side of the car. The tricky part was getting it from the rear seat to the front seat. Following a variation of the Factory Interactive instructions, I had pushed a stiff wire (they mentioned using the wire from a coat hanger, but I used a somewhat smaller gage wire) from the front to the back and used electrical tape to fasten the Sirius data wire, then pulled it through to the front. But before I pulled it through to the front, I also used electrical tape to fasten the end of the cellular antenna to the Sirius data wire, a little back from the front of that wire so that the two thick sections at the fronts of the two wires weren't in the same place.

It was quite a tight squeeze, and it kept getting stuck, but I kept twisting it and trying again and after a few minutes I got both wires through. I then removed the electric tape and sent the Sirius wire through to the dash. The cellular antenna wire was only barely long enough to reach a couple of inches under the driver's seat, and that was after carefully routing in the trunk area. But it did the trick. It looks a little unprofessional because the antenna wire just appears from under the driver door kick panel and heads under the seat, but it's not too bad and it's not in a very visible location.

As for the rest of the installation, I just plugged the Wilson amplifier into the external antenna cable under the driver's seat, plugged the power cable and internal antenna cable into the amplifier, and ran both under the seat to the right hand side of the driver's seat. I sent the power cord up the side of the center console and into the power outlet inside -- this is just temporary, and I plan to eventually send it under the console to tap into the 12 V power wires on the inside, to leave the power outlet free for other things, but for now it works fine and isn't very noticeable. I stuck the internal antenna on the driver's side of the center console, just above the height of the seat cushion. I then used a couple of extra zip ties from the Factory Interactive kit to take up the slack in the internal antenna and power cords and hold them to some other wiring under the seat, and I was done. I haven't even directly attached the amplifier itself to anything yet -- the wires hold it in place pretty well.

I chose the side of the console for the internal antenna because of my usage model. For my cell phone, I like to just keep it in my left hand front pants pocket and let it connect with Bluetooth to the car. The Wilson instructions recommend putting the antenna within 12 inches, and it's about that far away. I may at some point switch to having my cell phone in my right hand pocket to put it closer to the antenna, if I can undo years worth of habit. The other thing I plan to use this for is for my laptop, which I plan to mount above the center console. It has an HSDPA modem (same frequency bands as GSM) and with this internal antenna location the laptop's built-in antenna should also be pretty close to the amplifier's internal antenna.

I just finished all the installation late last night, and my only test so far was to drive out to a place where I was getting 1-2 bars of service. When I plugged in the power to the amplifier, it went to 3 bars, and when I unplugged it, it went back to 1-2 bars. It seemed pretty consistent. That was with my cell phone in my left front pocket.

I have tons of pictures, so if anyone is interested, just let me know what you're interested in seeing a picture of.

 

I've finally gotten my photos organized, so here are some shots from my installation.

First, here's a shot of the top of the car after the install. The antenna on the left is the cellular antenna and the one on the right is the Sirius antenna I installed at the same time.

[attachmentid=6632]

Here's where the antenna wire comes out next to the driver's seat.

[attachmentid=6633]

This one is a look under the driver's seat from the front. The amplifier itself isn't visible in this shot since it's under the left side of the seat, but the black block of the power supply is visible to the left in this view, along with some of the power supply and internal antenna wires.

[attachmentid=6634]

I can't find any shots from the day of the install that show the final location of the antenna wires coming into the car. I'll try to get a shot or two of that later today.

From the install process itself, I have these:

Here's where I pulled loose the weather stripping on the left side of the hatch. The wires end up going over the weather stripping right about at the right hand side of this shot. A little slack in the wires allows a "drip loop" -- so that any moisture on the wires will tend to go to the bottom of the loop, which is outside the weather stripping, rather than follow the wire over the weather stripping. After going over the weather stripping, the antenna wires go straight under the weather stripping and into the gap shown in this shot, running from the right down to the left.

[attachmentid=6635]

Here's another shot that shows the wire from one antenna just before it went into the opening under the weather stripping. The weather stripping pulls out, then the panel pulls out somewhat as shown. The wire goes under the panel right at its top end. Note that the drip loop is not present yet in this shot.

[attachmentid=6636]

Next, the antenna wire is routed down from the gap under the weather stripping to the area behind the brake light (this panel just pops off).

[attachmentid=6637]

From there, it can be handed down to the area below the side panel. The side tray needs to be removed first, then it's pretty easy to hand through.

[attachmentid=6638]

(Yes, I keep emergency packages of junk food packed in various nooks and cranies under the back floor of my car! )

More disassembly is required for the next step. The kick panels on the left rear and front seats need to be removed (they just snap off). The lower cusion of the back seat needs to be removed (it just pulls out, off two rings, one near the front of each side). This gives access to the panel to the left of the left rear seat back. I don't remember for sure, but I think a bolt has to be removed to get this off. Once that panel is off, a couple of bolts in the back of the car securing the panel on the side of the cargo area need to be removed -- one is in the place where the roll-out cover for the cargo area sits. The panel to the side of the cargo area doesn't need to be removed, just pulled out some. Here's what it looks like inside when it's open (this shot is tilted 90 degrees -- up is to the right).

[attachmentid=6639]

Now it's not hard to pull the antenna wire through here to beside the back seat and along the floor with the rest of the wiring along there.

Note that at this point if you're careful you can pull out a lot of slack and reposition the wire to be as high as possible in the area to the side of the cargo area. This gives more wire to reach up under the front seat.

Now comes the hardest part -- getting the wire from beside the back left seat to beside the front left (aka driver's) seat. To do this, a sturdy wire of some sort is needed as a fish line. A bent coat hanger will work, though I used a somewhat narrower wire I happened to have on hand. This wire is passed through from the front to the back, then the antenna wire is taped on and the fish line is pulled back through to the front, where the antenna wire is untaped.

Here's my fish wire going through from the front.

[attachmentid=6641]

In my case, I was routing both the Sirius data cable and the cellular antenna wire through here, so I taped both to my fish line. Here's what it looked like just after taping and just before being pulled through to the front.

[attachmentid=6642]

It was pretty hard to pull through. Make sure the electrical tape completely covers the connectors on the ends of the wires so there's nothing to snag. I had to twist and push and pull for a while but it eventually came through.

Here it is on the other side, after coming through.

[attachmentid=6643]

Now, just take off the tape and the wire routing is done. Put all the pieces of the car back together.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jmann @ Feb 22 2007, 09:07 PM) [snapback]395041[/snapback]</div>

Yes, the magnet has a nice firm grip, and it doesn't weight very much. I've been driving around with it for several days, including some driving at highway speeds, and it hasn't moved at all. To prepare the surface of the roof, I followed the instructions from Factory Interactive for the Sirius antenna and cleaned it with soapy water, then rinsed with plain water, then used an alcohol swab. I don't know if it really matters, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

I hope your install goes well!