Day 138 - WeBoost Cell Signal Amplifier

 As mentioned in the last post, the project of the day was to install the cell signal booster. I picked up the WeBoost Drive-X RV made by Wilson Electronics. It is designed for a mobile installation and includes brackets to install on a vertical post such as the ladder or rack. I used the very solid awning bracket and just drilled holes in the bracket to match the awning. Blue thread lock was included for the mounting hardware. A spring is installed on the base of the antenna. The 25’ of coax was run along the awning roof mounting and, for now, I fed it into the RV through the slide seal. A drip loop was added to the cable before it went through the seal. For the “final” install (once antenna locations are finalized) I’ll use the included pass-through for the wall of the RV. A hole saw was also included with the installation hardware.

I installed the amplifier to the cabinet right over the passenger seat. I was originally going to install it inside of the cabinet but the amplifier gets pretty warm while running. A DC-DC converter was included which supplies the 5VDC needed by the amplifier and was wired into the adjacent cabinet. An AC adapter was also included. We are still trying different locations for the inside antenna. The directions say that the optimal distance is between 4’ and 10’ to your devices.

Apple appears to have removed the ability to show cellular signal level. But we went from one bar of 1X to two bars of LTE. Enough to stream YouTube. I guess I’m satisfied with that. The location of the various components allow us to have the amplifier running even while driving down the road.