r/OffGridCabins • u/OK_The_Nomad • 2d ago
Help choosing phone signal booster
Hey guys, I have an off-grid cabin near Mt St Helens and my previous LTE/5G signal booster finally took its last breath. I had a cheap Amazon booster that worked decently though not 100% reliably. But pretty good for a cabin--I could use the internet and watch films but couldn't download. I would create a hotspot with my phone and watch films and go online on my tablet.
I need to buy a new booster and am thinking of getting a higher quality booster. I'm looking at the types you put a signal receiver (I don't know the technical term) on the roof or in a tree so that it can pick up the signal from a cell tower and by running the line from the booster into your cabin, you can get online using the 5G or LTE on the phone. The cabin is in a fairly mountainous area but as I said booster work up there.
I'm looking at some pretty pricey boosters($600 to about $800) so I don't want to make the wrong decision. I've been looking at "WeBoost Cabin" brand and I'm wondering if anyone has had luck with the brand. Do people have other brands to suggest? I'd like something that works more reliably than my previous set up.
My cabin is only about 1000 sq feet. In case anyone wants to see, this is the link for the booster I'm looking at:
Thanks for any help you can provide.
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u/kmp11 2d ago
Weboost amplifies existing signal, the packaging will tell you how by how much. If you have no signal, it won't work. There are phone apps that can help you with the gain.
I own two of them, one for my truck and one for my cabin. They are good enough for me to work remotely.
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u/OK_The_Nomad 9m ago
Thanks. Yes I do have signal strong enough for it to work. Glad to hear of your experience. It helps.
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u/LordGarak 2d ago
You don't need to spend a lot on a booster, but you do need to get a booster that supports the right bands for your location.
At my cabin I only need band 13 as that is the only signal that supports good data rates that reaches my cabin. So I found a booster than supported that band and then found an antenna that has decent gain in that band. Most booster antennas support that band but have little to no gain on that band. I actually ended up making my own antenna for the indoor side as most of the antennas that came with the boosters were terrible on this band. But I have a nanoVNA that let me do the proper measurements of the home made antenna and home made antennas are not really legal in most places.
Here in Canada we have an excellent online cell tower map that shows all the towers and what bands they offer service on. From that map its easy to figure out which tower is closest and has a good line of sight. You can also work out the heading to that tower for aiming your outside antenna. It is not always the closest tower that you will get service from. The nearest tower to my cabin is completely blocked by a hill, the tower way up the river is the one we can hit directly.
Without a good cell tower map you can use something like field test mode on a iphone by dialing 3001#12345# to check which band your connecting on. Pointing your antenna might take some trial and error.
Good separation between the indoor and outdoor antenna is important. Having a metal roof in between can help a lot. Also getting the outdoor antenna up high on a mast can help too. Pointing your antenna in the right direction is also critical. I've seen many antennas pointing off into space rather than towards the cell tower.
I just bought the cheapest booster I could find on amazon that supported the band I needed. I did spend a bit extra to find an antenna that had some decent gain on band 13. I didn't use the antennas that came with the cheap booster. That said I have the test gear to evaluate the cheap antennas, its really a crap shoot going by the specs on amazon.
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u/ablazedave 2d ago
5G has better beam forming and lower range, I'm finding areas where I used to be able to get signal is less reliable. Get something with a good return policy, cause it might not work. I have the weboost 4G
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u/SolsticeFauna 12h ago
I have a WeBoost - barely gives any boost to signal - maybe one bar. Waste of money for me - went w Starlink & very happy, except for the Elon thing.
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u/OK_The_Nomad 11m ago
Thanks! That sucks it didn’t work. I want to try to avoid going with Starlink just bc of the cost.
Yeah, the Elon thing. But I’d get it if it were the only option that worked.
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u/Marmot_Nice 2d ago
Starlink. We tried WeBoost Cabin it was useless. We had 1 bar without it so in theory it should have worked. It did not. Sent it back for a full refund and for a fraction of the cost we went with the mini and have been very happy. The mini has replaced our internet both at our cabin and at home for a fraction of what we had been paying Spectrum for our home internet alone. Install was incredibly easy compared to WeBoost.