Panda wi-fi adapter kinda sortof works with Alfa router

In my last blog I said Panda adapters worked with Alfa routers; might have been too hasty saying that. I used to search for wood to chip on my property, but haven't had the time to do that lately. The other day I found the time to do some wood hunting, but when I got past some heavy brush I started losing signal. This might have been the result of using an unsupported adapter, or it could have been caused by my having passed the high speed data limit on my Internet account. I decided to wait for my data limit to reset before trying another adapter.

Last night I tried checking on the webcams around my property. The two cameras that are attached to the outside of my home were offline. The camera on the outside of my chicken coop was still online, but it was getting network errors. This made me think the signal from the antenna was weaker.The outdoor antenna increases the signal strength by narrowing the physical shape of the signal; it's actually flattening the oblate spheroid shape of the signal. If the signal is weaker (as the result of the adapter signal being weaker) then it's not going to reach the two house cameras that are right below it. The signal spreads enough by the time it gets to the chicken coop to reach the outdoor coop cam, but the network errors indicated the signal had too much noise (probably the result of using an unsupported adapter). So, I decided to change back to the Alfa adapter.

When I got back home I swapped out the Panda adapter with the original Alfa adapter. Immediately, all the cameras went on!ine, and the network errors vanished. So far, so good. Unfortunately, I believed the weather reports, that said no rain today. I didn't try protecting the Alfa adapter from the rain, so naturally we had a horrific thunderstorm during the afternoon. The adapter was wiped out, so I replaced it with the Panda adapter, and everything is running just fine again. Hopefully the Alfa adapter just has to dry out, and I'll be able to use it again. If the Alfa adapter is truly ruined, I'll see if I can get some type of noise filter for my adapter/router/signal booster/antenna setup. If worst comes to worst, I'll just have to buy a new AWUS036NH Alfa adapter.