Wifi access points are heavily regulated within Europe, with the limits being, for example on about times less power than in the United States, where, in turn, the transmit power is about 4 times less than in Australia. Australia is perhaps the one country with the least regulation, probably in order to account for its size, where Wifi can transmit with up to or . Another alternative when looking for less regulation is to attempt and purchase "boat Wifi", or rather access points meant to be used at sea, that are typically unlocked from any local regulation in particular. Aside from regular use, long range Wifi is sometimes used for wardriving and some research into Wifi networks but availability of powerful devices is pretty low.

With that being said, this tutorial will take an ESUP EP-8523 and reverse-engineer it to remove the patch antenna, place it in a smaller case and extract an antenna header for an attachable external antenna, as well as add an antenna amplifier for in order to create a compact long-range access point.

The EDUP EP-8523 is an easier alternative to find rather than the better known "Alfa Network" adapters. The EDUP EP-8523, in spite of the official description, is capable of transmitting up to a little less than or . These dongles or adapters are typically limited to b, g, n standards and also fairly featureless in terms of marketing features, in exchange for their major benefit of having a very large operating power by contrast to commercial solutions.

The EDUP EP-8523 is easily opened, the label on the lower back can be removed, exposing just two screws, at which point the entire case just slides off, exposing the actual network card.

On the other side, the EDUP EP-8523 presents a dipole patch antenna that is connected with a piece of cable to the network card on the other side.

Here is a close-up of the circuit board of the EDUP:

The task is now straight forward, the card will be removed and placed into a metal enclosure and some antenna cable will be used to attach the antenna signal from the card to an RP-SMA connector.

The EP-AB007 is a amplifier that boasts up to amplification. The only ticky part about using the EP-AB007 is that its advertised required input power is up to whereas the EDUP EP-8523 Wifi card itself can output up to . However, like most equipment goes, it is still possible to feed the signal into the EP-AB007 and get some amplification, accounting for fluctuating power and losses over the connector cable. This will end up overclocking the EP-AB007 such that after removing the circuit board, a solid heatsink has to be built in to accommodate for the extra dissipated heat.

The EP-AB007 pops open easily, the metal plate in the back can be unscrewed and removed, revealing the small PCB.

The back of the PCB exposes a copper plate that, in the original metal block case, is placed against the metal in order to transfer the heat to the case.

One of the first steps is to remove the two LEDS, one of them being the power status indicator, and the other LED being the activity LED, and then replace the LEDs with JST sockets in order to be able to pull the signal to the outside of the box that the PCB will be placed inside.

The EDUP EP-8523 PCB is then fitted using some nylon standoffs into a metal case. The standoffs are just glued to the case because the interior of the box will not require any resistance to shock or water such that their job will be to only hold the PCB in place.

Some RG316/U cable is attached to the signal and ground of the EDUP EP-8523 PCB. The antenna cable will feed into the EP-AB007 amplifier inside the case. First however, a heatsink must be created for the EP-AB007 that will be in contact with the rest of the case in order to better dissipate heat.

A piece of aluminum heatsink is salvaged from a power source, then cut to shape and then glued to the metal case using some thermal glue. Concerning the EP-AB007, the power jack is removed from the back entirely, such that the aluminum heatsink has to be cut accordingly in order to not make a short between the remaining and now exposed power jack trace points.

One side of the box is drilled through in order to fit one of the RP-SMA connectors extracted from the amplifier. The RP-SMA connector is actually glued to the side of the case due to the screws being way too small and would not provide sufficient tensile strength. However, after the antenna jack is glued, the holes are drilled through again and filled with solder in order to ensure that the jack makes contact with the rest of the case for a good grounding.

The antenna wiring is easy to understand, the output of the Wifi card goes into the input of the amplifier, that, in turn, feeds into the external RP-SMA connector.

The LEDs from the amplifier are replaced and pulled to the outside of the case where holes are drilled. Unfortunately, after measurements, the Wifi card LED is not trivially connected to any exposed lead on the PCB from where the signal could be tapped, so instead a piece of optical fiber is placed on top of the LED and then some hot melt glue is spilled around the connection and left to cool down. When the plastic will cool down, the optic fiber will be immobile and will transfer the light from the LED to the outside of the case. Ideally, the plastic should have been opaque and reflective, like a shade of aluminum but the transparent hot melt glue is okay too as long as the end of the optic fiber is right on top of the LED.

Here is an image of the LEDs mounted on the side of the box along with the antenna RP-SMA jack that shows the optical fibre working properly.