Embedded Lab

Tecwyn Twmffat built an Arduino-based Cell Phone 4G Signal Booster.

Arduino cellphone signal booster

Living on an island in the middle of nowhere, mobile/cell phone reception can be rather intermittent and it seems that there is currently no reliable open source gadget that could help me solve this problem on my kind of budget.

I do have the option of using ‘cable phone’ but being of a general ‘Pirate’ disposition I thought it would be a better idea to do all my phone calls, emails and data transactions by cell phone and save a whole bunch of dollars by not having to pay for land based line rental and broadband etc. Doing everything through my phone is a lot cheaper and still plenty quick enough to watch films and videos without any buffering.

I actually tried buying an off the shelf repeater but it completely jammed my phone up and I started to get worried that it was going to damage it, so instead I opened it up to see how it worked – maybe I could repair it? Unfortunately none of the components could be identified and furthermore, it looked like it had been severely ‘messed about with’ at the factory. The soldering looked very poor and a large piece of metal swarf fell out of the opened case 🙁