So Your Roomba Vacuums … Does It Also Take Pictures? describes a number of silly “hardware hacks” — like putting the guts of an old Atari 2600 into a small case with an LCD display, or putting the guts of a PC into a case of beer — but this one sounds much more practical:
Stan Swan, an electronics teacher in Wellington, New Zealand, greatly boosts the range of wireless Wi-Fi Internet connections. He has constructed a custom antenna for his laptop computer out of a standard, finger-size Wi-Fi receiver, several feet of computer cable, a garden-hose coupler and a cheap Chinese skimmer normally used to fish things out of woks. The skimmer has a parabolic shape, much as a satellite dish does, that focuses the signal. And the gaps in the mesh allow wind to pass through for outdoor use. Mr. Swan, who says he is ‘very fond of Chinese food,’ once used a wok itself as his antenna, but gusts of wind kept knocking it over.The Wi-Fi receiver costs about $25, the skimmer less than $10. With a 12-inch-diameter model, Mr. Swan says he can usually pick up Wi-Fi ‘hotspots’ three miles away if he has an unobstructed line of sight. Consumer Wi-Fi equipment usually has a range of no more than a few hundred yards.