My wife is disabled and can’t get out of the house too well. She wants to watch the birds and the nature around our lake. So I decided to install a high-def, high zoom PoE PTZ camera in one of the trees facing the lake.

That tree is 180 ft away from the house. Of course I could punch a hole in the wall of the house and run a long solid-core CAT6 cable underground all the way to the lakefront, but I’d rather not.

But the tree is only 15 ft from our cottage. So all I needed was a Wifi bridge in the cottage connected to the main Wifi router in the house, and connected to a PoE injector on its LAN side, and then I can run a short ethernet cable from the injector out the cottage to the camera in the tree.

So I did some rummage in my box of mystery e-waste and found a router-looking thing that I remember rescuing from my neighbor’s trash many years ago (a neighbor from another city in another country). I didn’t dumpster-dive it mind you, I just took it from him as he was throwing it away. He told me the thing didn’t light up anymore. I remember my wife scolding me for collecting yet another piece of dead electronics too that day.

I looked up the model number - a Cisco Linksys WES610N and sure enough, it’s a Wifi bridge. Not a recent one, but hey, it’s better than no Wifi bridge.

I opened it up, quickly saw that the 12V socket’s ground was desoldered, soldered it back onto the PCB, and what do you know: it lives!

I connected it to our Wifi, then put it in the cottage 160 ft away and it works just fine. It’s 15 years old but it’s perfectly serviceable.

Next time my wife tells me to stop being a packrat, I’ll point her to the birds on her computer screen 🙂

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Nice. Fixing a thing with a soldering iron is satisfying.

    I got an animated Halloween witch for 90% off because it didn’t work. Got it home, opened it up and fixed a broken connection.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    252·
    6 days ago

    I remember my wife scolding me for collecting yet another piece of dead electronics too that day.

    Next time my wife tells me to stop being a packrat, I’ll point her to the birds on her computer screen 🙂

    Be careful, that’s the first step to being proud of hoarding. You could have bought one pretty inexpensively.

    • ExtremeDullard@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      281·
      6 days ago

      Be careful, that’s the first step to being proud of hoarding. You could have bought one pretty inexpensively.

      Or… I can fix the one in my box and have one for free.

      To be clear, I’m not a hoarder. I do have too much stuff, but it’s neatly packed away, and I readily throw it in the trash the minute it encroaches on our living space. I like a clean, welcoming environment.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        10·
        6 days ago

        I was mostly talking to myself, lol. We have a lot of unique art supplies that we justify keeping. Same, it’s neat now for us, but I can see how it could quickly get out of hand.

  • Libb@piefed.socialEnglish
    10·
    6 days ago

    Excellent! & congrats times 2.

    1. for reducing e-waste, which sounds much nicer than ‘trash diving’ :)
    2. and more importantly, for managing to set up something that neat for your spouse!
  • kubok@fedia.io
    3·
    6 days ago

    This post is in the wrong community. It should be on /c/wholesome.

    Well done sir.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    2·
    6 days ago

    That’s a solid model. Great for the old systems that don’t have wifi but do have Ethernet.

  • massive_bereavement@fedia.io
    2·
    6 days ago

    Have you considered a drone at some point? (I don’t know if it is a feasible thing or it would just ensure birds never ever come around).