HiBoost 4K Smart Link

Now we’re kind of increasing the electronic leash, if you will but it’s for good reason. Good morning Mission Control. It is Friday, May 22nd. It is a beautiful day here on the homestead. I’m feeling good. God has blessed us. I hope God has blessed you. I hope you’re having a great day and I hope you’re all safe. Hey, I want to talk to you today about a problem that I’ve had, that I now have a solution for. We live out in the middle of nowhere. You see behind me, we’re way out here. And what does that mean? It means we have really bad cell service. In the house, I have a Wilson electronics. I’ve had it for years now. Amplifier, repeater for cell phone it’s professional grade. You can’t buy the cheap stuff when you’re out here. It just doesn’t work. I’ve tried, I’ve tried everything. You can’t use internet repeater. Some of you might be thinking, why don’t you use internet? It’s because the internet sucks. You don’t have an option. You gotta pay. If you want to play, you gotta pay. 

So today I’m headed out to the shop because the repeater that we have in house, it works, it bumps up the signal by quite a few DB, almost like 10/20 DB, which is enough to give us cell service and even LTE. So we can actually do some streaming through our phones but out the shop, the repeater only covers the house. So I have no service, no real service at the shop. And once you go in the metal building, right there, service totally sucks. In fact, it goes to zero. So I actually reached out to a company and we’re going to be talking about their stuff today because I’m going to get an install put together and actually see about solving this problem. Welcome out to the shop. And here is our solution totally up front. This product was sent to me after I reached out to them and said, Hey, I got a problem. Just like I told you guys. So this just happens to be a product that’s solving a problem I have. We’re not doing like a, here’s a random thing and there’s no point to this video other than for me doing a product review, which is what a lot of people think I do. But no I actually try to only do product reviews of products that I actually want or need like the flashlight that I did. I needed a good flashlight. So I did a product review. 

Hey, if you got it use it, and today we are going to be doing a unboxing and installation of this. First, just starting off, very well packaged very excited about getting this all set up. So we need to kind of take some measurements on the phone service before we get going. So let’s look at that real quick. This is the only place in the shop where I get service, which is right next to the door, literally like 12 inches away from the door and what we have here is a LTE discovery. It’s the app that I use previously to measure everything. And right now we’ve got basically we’re on 3G and we have a -104 DB on that and for EVDO, which is a non network type written -107 DB. We don’t have any LTE, it just went to -105. So-105 DB, -102DB. Those are going to be our baseline values for this installation. We’ll see how well it changes. I’m very, very, unhopeful of how well this is gonna work. Again, I have a Wilson electronics, which is actually, you know what I think Wilson electronics is now owned by Sorenson Capital and high boost is part of the haptic optic family of product. So these are competitors. So I’m excited to see how they do. They’re both professional grade devices as you’ll see. So one of the things that is boasted about on this particular product is it’s quality of components. Let’s open it the right way here. So they’re claiming industrial grade components and having had things that aren’t industrial grade, we should feel it pretty easily. The Wilson is a standard going forward. Here is probably what the indoor, yeah, this is probably an indoor antenna, t has good connectors on it. Not the small little guys and it feels good. It’s nice and strong. Here’s the unit itself well packaged and yeah, you can feel it’s like aluminum. Yeah. I mean, that’s really nice. That’s actually nicer than a Wilson, that’s that’s way nicer. And it has a digital display, which the Wilson doesn’t so you kinda, you don’t even really know what’s going on with the Wilson here. We got, Jeff took half the stuff over. So it’s a little messy in there, not their fault, my fault. 

Here’s the outdoor antenna, which is much larger than the Wilson one. And it’s directional, which is great. Cause the Wilson one came with an AMI, which I think they’ve upgraded. So I don’t, that’s not a slight on Wilson. I’m just saying that’s the one it came with. I think they have a directional kit now that you can get, but this is our outdoor directional, which we absolutely need in this location, power cable, Mount antenna, or adapter outdoor Mount, you’ve got some Velcro and some stickiness here, some more mounts and stuff or mounts and stuff. And then deep down, we’ve got the cable. So we got the cable, it runs 50 feet, 30 feet. So that should be enough for us to do what we need to do. Make a flat surface and just collect so much stuff. Well, there’s all of our goodies. It’s looking nice so far. I got it all organized here. So we’ve got cables, outdoor or indoor and outdoor antenna, the main unit itself, it’s antenna, power cables and all the mount stuff. And then here are the instructions, which as you can see, I’ve never opened before. So it’s time for me to read. Smart booster must be strategically placed. 

Before you really get going with everything. You really kind of got to do a site survey and figure out where the best place to Mount everything is right over to your right is our wifi extender. Now wifi operates on about the 2.4, this wifi offers and the 2.4 gigahertz frequency. This particular, the cell phone service I have is at 1900 megahertz. It’s CDMA technology. Now this particular, amplifier will work for every type of cell phone that’s out there. But I specifically am looking for that 1900 megahertz as well as the LTE frequency, which is a way from the 2.4 gigahertz, but it’s not really far away. And what that means is we don’t really want to put an antenna next to another antenna because you can get interference and it’ll screw up your wifi and it’ll screw up your cell service. So you do want to keep away from your wifi now, depending on what service you have, what frequency your phones operate on. I can tell you that for us, if we turn wifi on, we lose LTE. So I know it’s very close as far as its band goes. 

So what we’re going to do is we’re actually going to be going up here with it, which I don’t want to do, because I hate going up high. I really, really hate going up high. I really don’t like it, but before we can get that all done and we actually need to go make a pole to put it on. So let’s get inside. It is cold out here today. My goodness let’s get inside and go make a pole. I just happened to have some old tubes stuck here. Let us make it flatter. I love this vice total, this whole work bench from the neighbors. Awesome. Thank you again, Cody. So you might be wondering what we were are we trying to accomplish with this post? I think its kind of obvious, but here is our directional antenna that goes outdoors. This is the mounting bracket that goes on it. You clamp. 

This allows us to rotate it so that we can change its orientation and make it beautiful. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to mount now we can mount this up top and then we can put this all in it and we need to bring some holes through the building. Well let’s go look at everything first. Make sure we do this nice. We’re also getting that 20 foot separation. Well, my wifi repeater is causing all sorts of problems here with this particular setup. No fault of the company. And by causing problems, I don’t have this thing turned on yet obviously, but that wifi repeater is in a really nice spot, which this would be good in as well. And every other spot that I could put this thing in the barn in order to get the maximum coverage of the repeater or of this thing, ll probably either one interfere with the wireless repeater or two it will have a bunch of metal between it and the wireless repeater or have a bunch of metal between, excuse me, the transmission directional antenna and the tower. 

So my particular location is a little bit tricky. So I’m deciding that I’m going to go ahead and follow the instructions. I’m going to do a soft set up. I’m actually going to set, I’m just going to go outside with this thing, get this thing all hooked up and connect the internal antenna as well, set it all up and then see how everything changes and we’ll go from there. So I have the outdoor antenna outside with the metal door shut because if you open the metal door, then you get you’ll get signal. The metal is what really stops everything. And I have the antenna indoor antenna all the way up at the top of the barn. Now this antenna can be mounted to the wall. In fact, the instructions say Mount it to the wall, but I’m having a hard time doing just that, because I really need like all this area to have coverage. The best place to accomplish that amount of coverage is to mount it all the way in the back and point it this way. But I’m not certain we have enough length to do that. So we need to play around with it. But right now it’s up there and I actually have four bars of LTE now, whereas before I had none. So as far as does it work? The answer is yes, as bandit would say, or bandit is probably just saying, feed me, let’s go play. And right now, remember before we didn’t have any LTE and I’m using LTE discovery and we’re sitting at -108DB, -107DB of LTE service.

I made a phone call. I made two phone calls actually, once I turned it on the phone rang, as you know, it’s still a [inaudible]. You want to be able to communicate with people, but sometimes you don’t want to be communicated with, you know what I’m saying? And now we’re kind of increasing the electronic leash if you will. But it’s for a good reason. Yeah. I’m standing right here underneath of it. And I’m getting a four bars of LTE. I’ve downloaded their app and it is Bluetooth. The only problem with the app is that I can’t go too far away from the receiver. So that’s tough for me, but four bars of LTE in here, let me go in the office and see what that looks like. So I made another phone call from in here as well. And here I have three bars at LTE, which makes sense because we have all this stuff in between. I’m at -109 DB, -110DB of signal strength. So that’s really not much and it just jumped up to four bars there of LTE. And what that means is I’m now able to make phone calls and not have to put everything. I can take my phone holder down and I can have a desktop phone holder if you will. 

Let’s walk around the barn a little bit more and see how it works. We’re moving away from it now, -100 DB, -101DB, I mean I’m getting I’m in the side lobes of that antenna now and I’m getting really, Oh, they’re just dropped. Okay. But either way I didn’t have service period. Remember we’re on EVDO network or the CDMA, sorry for the alphabet soup. I didn’t make it up. These are just the different network types. There was no signal here at all. And now we have signal, not just signal, but we have LTE signal. I can stream. This is how the antenna is set up. Needs to be high, way, way high. I’m already super stoked. You remember, remember I have a Wilson. This is already outperforming the Wilson. Just hands down, just in this configuration, just laying on the ground. 

It’s outperforming and the indoor antenna is superior to the Wilson indoor antenna. Just so much stronger way, better power. The unit’s way easier to use. Definitely, definitely am a fan of this so far, but now I got to get this thing mounted up and route all this cable. And honestly, that’s hurting my head right now. Cause there’s no real easy way to do it. You might be wondering, hey, this guy might be completely full of it. There is two bars of Roam here outside, zero LTE. We’re back to -92 DB on the EVDO, the CDMA network. And we have -97 DB of 3G essentially. There we go. Ran it inside here. This one piece of metal is actually loose. The wind blew it loose last winter and it needed to be fixed anyway. So I kind of killed two birds with one stone here did actually move this over next to the wifi transmitter receiver, and sure enough, it did interfere and we lost signal strength of both systems so needed to keep it as far away as I could. This is as far away as I can get it without putting a big metal building in front of it. I could have moved this all the way to the back of the barn. 

But if I would have done that, then there’d be this huge metal building out in front and that would screw up radio wave, which comes out with a giant center node in 360. I’m going to sneeze. It comes out with a big bubble that, which is, you know, like this. And then it has side lobes that go all the way around it like a flower, like a flower, right? And if I were to put that metal building right in front, it would screw up that signal. You really want your antenna to have no obstruction in front of them. We are upstairs now up above the shop, the office. I think I’m going to call it the office because it’s really, really pretty darn nice actually. All right. 

What we need to do now, I’ve decided I’m gonna mount it right here. Very clear. There we go. Look at that fanciness. Okay. Go like this. You can see this wall. A subscriber actually donated plywood. I just haven’t had time yet to come in here, because I have to move all this stuff out and finish up this wall. And then it’ll be really super nice up here. So we’ve got to get to that cause that’s awfully nice that somebody donated plywood to the project here. Thanks again. This is turning out really, really nice up here. I cannot wait to get the loading bench put in, got the bench here, but I don’t have the loading equipment. I got to learn how to use it all and get it all put up here. But the lights are great. Storage is great. It’s nice and warm up here. Heat rises. Yay. Love physics. And I got my window, man. 

If we get this set up just right. I could even be streaming video up here. I could come out here, man. Unlimited Potential! Well folks, I want to be honest. This is the part I super duper don’t like, alright, I’m going up on the ladder right now. So do not reply to this. I don’t want to be freaked out while I’m up there and have a heart attack and fall. Again, don’t reply. I’ll let you know when I’m down. My hands are super sweaty right now. I don’t like doing it, but I have to do it. It has to be done. So now what I was saying, don’t reply. Cause I’m up high on a ladder, but that didn’t matter. Anyway, With this particular antenna placement, I’m not sure we’ve we might get some interference from this guy here, the fluorescent, but I like this mounting location. 

So now what I need to do is go turn this all on and take our measurements. So let’s get our before measurements right here. I have no service at all. None, no CDMA, no text, no talk, nothing. We are completely without service. Which is the norm. So you can see earlier when we came out here and we had four bars of LTE, we were rocking around. Oh, it just grabbed a little bit. It grabbed -105DB on voice and then just lost it. So let’s go crank it on and see what happens. Just grabbed LTE and we’re at negative, whoa, we’ve got Holy cow, we’ve got 97 DB. Oh my goodness guys. This is the best. Look at that. That is superior. Oh, that means the mounting and everything is rocking. Let’s go in the office and check it out. Four bars of service right here, three. That makes sense, because we’re inside. And we went from that 97 DB down to -109DB, but that’s for 108DB. That’s four bars at LTE. I could not make a call from in here. It’s HD quality. Hey there, can you hear me? Hey. Wow. You are like super clear. I’ve got you. You’re on YouTube right now, by the way. And we’re calling you from my office out here where I used to not have any service. How do I sound?

Female Caller:

You are coming through really loud, but it’s a little bit fuzzy, but Oh my goodness. I can’t believe that we’re talking like this, before I couldn’t even understand the words that you were saying.

The Real Martian:

Yeah, I got HD plus call quality. I can hear you. You sound perfect.

Female Caller:

Wow. Yeah, you’re cutting out a little bit, but pretty darn good, babe. I’ll take it.

The Real Martian:

Alright. Talk to you later. Alright. Well there you have it boss approved. I don’t even know what HD calling is. Yeah. I have no idea what HD calling is, but obviously it’s a really, really good. And I’m all the way out here. Let’s walk out here. The Wilson, you basically have to be like standing right in front of the -95 back here. You have 95. Wow. I got full service here. This is unbelievable. Unbelievable. I highly recommend this product so far. I have nothing but good things to say about this product. I gotta finish that up there and get those wires all tucked in. So let’s do that and continue this conversation. Hi guys even appear at -104DB so I’m right in the side lobes of that antenna. This is really truly a game changer. Just truly amazing. Okay five bars. 

Well in this deal, I really hope that I would just get something equivalent to what we have up at the house. We got something way better than that. This system from HiBoost, I cannot recommend enough. As far as its initial install and set up and all that goes, it is the same level of complexity as any of these, really. This one does have automatic systems inside of it to where you don’t necessarily have to control the gain too much. There are ways that you can go in and edit this. It does have the ability to change some of its settings. My Wilson, you have to go in there manually change and then if you get overlap and a whole bunch of weird RF stuff that can happen where it interferes with itself and a whole bunch of issues can occur. This doesn’t have any of that. Honestly, I want one of these for my house. I do. I want to just completely remove the Wilson and put these in. 

Now what I don’t know what I mean, cause I’ve just installed it. I don’t know how long it’s going to last. The Wilson has lasted for years. You just turn it on and it goes. I presume this is going to be the same. It’s constructed very, very well it’s high grade aluminum that they use to build that frame. Really good components. I mean, as far as like the antenna, they’re the same quality as what I’ve seen in Wilson. Wilson, by the way, it’s kind of a, what do they call it. Pro-sumer type of grade, you know, almost a professional grade equipment and that’s where this is going to be at. But getting this in your house, if you live out where we live, this is almost like, you have to do it. In fact, I’m gonna go tell my other neighbor about this, you’ve got to have this. I’m not just saying that because they send it to me. 

I’m saying it because I want one up at the house because I’ve been fussing with this problem for years. For years, I’ve been playing around with how to get good cell phone service and get good internet. I’m really curious to know how our internet would play along with this. We use sprint as our cell phone provider. This works with AT & T, Verizon, US Cellular, Srint, T-Mobile, all of them, it works with all of them. It’s not just based on your carrier. Carriers like AT & T you can call them and they’ll give you a internet wifi extender. Sprint, give you an internet, wifi extender, which just uses your internet. That doesn’t work up here because we don’t have internet. This is the only way to go. And this is working so much better than the one we have at the house that I would love to see how our Sprint hotspot, which Sprint has the best deals on hotspots for $60, you get a hundred gigabytes. 

That’s un-heard of for hotspots. And we can use that. And I am really curious to see how well it performs with this system. And if I bring it out here, basically everything is served from up at the house right now. So the shop here, the site, the house, all the internet is served through the house. If I reverse that now, you know what? I still have a weak spot because I’m sending RF up there. Yeah. So we better have one of these up at the house and serve it that way. Still that’s the best way to do it, but Oh my goodness. So happy with this. The LCD screen is really nice. So you can see what’s going on there. You can immediately see the signal changes as soon as I turned it on down here and turned it on up there. You can see the signals different. The app is cool. You can go on and it helps you do the pointing. The only problem with the app is you gotta be within 20, 30 feet of the actual unit itself, which sometimes that’s difficult to do, especially when you’ve got 80 feet of wire to play with. So you should be able to be up at 80 feet. Probably if you went on wifi, you could do that but Bluetooth, it doesn’t it doesn’t work all that well. So, but I knew where to point since I already did all that work, totally lapsed time on this project was about four hours and I had two interruptions where I had to go to the neighbor’s house, take care of some stuff down there, as well as helping Mrs. Marshall out with some things just momentarily. But the majority of the time was spent going around the barn shop, trying to figure out where the best place was to mount it and knowing where I needed to point it to, and then playing around with the soft setup, which is where I just had it kind of strung out and making sure it was gonna work. 

Once I decided where to put it, it went together very, very quickly. But I spent majority of that time reading the instructions and just figuring out where to put it. So if you knew where you wanted to put yours already, or if you’re limited in where you could put it I think you could probably get this thing installed in an hour easy, but it took me a while, because those interruptions and just really thinking through everything. Totally, totally happy with it. I cannot recommend this enough. I hope this video gets out to people, tat are just like me, that, you know, you need cell phone service. Here, I’m in a big, giant metal building with five bars of LTE right now. Amazing. 

Let’s watch Star Trek Enterprise. It’s been a long road getting from there to here. Oh, there it is. Advertisements up. It just keeps giving me advertisements every time. But anyway, I was even streaming YouTube. Look at this YouTube. You guys don’t, you don’t understand because 10 ADP, I don’t get to watch videos in 10 ADP. Amazing. I have to have one of these. Wow. What I really want to ask them is if I could get an outdoor antenna and extend outdoor between the house and here. Oh my goodness gracious. Would that be fantastic! Because we have our family reunion here every year. And if I could get coverage out there, everyone can be on LTE service, which, hey, let’s face it. That’s a big deal these days, kids, they want to be on the phone and all the devices and stuff. So, Oh my goodness. I want to say thank you to HiBoost for sending this to us. I am, I am extremely grateful. I am. You don’t understand. You’ve enabled my business out here. You’ve enabled me to do business. So thank you. 

I think that means something to everybody. You’ve made a good product. Very good product. That’s working extremely well and time will tell how great it is, but I have no reason to expect that your product is going to be anything but a superb. It’s all mounted up. Everything’s out of sight, out of mind and should never have to touch it again. So, Im very excited about this. I hear my five o’clock alarm is going off. So it is five o’clock somewhere. And that is here. Before I forget, we have one last thing to do. Come with me. I’m going to need this. No need for my cell phone holder anymore. I think I need a 3D print, a new cell phone holder out here, but it doesn’t have to go there. It gets to go on the desk now. So thanks again for following along. Really appreciate it. Thanks again for HiBoost for sending us this kit. So that we could put it together and make everything better out here. Thank you so much for that. You guys know where to follow us at. You can follow us on Patreon and feel like support what we’re doing in the meantime. This is The Real Martian. Out.