What HW and SW for booster/repeater/hotspot on a boat?

[demonboy]

I'm a complete noob to RPi and have yet to purchase any HW or SW, but I'm about to buy the B+ and want to know what other things I require for my little project.

I live on a boat where wifi connection is often quite bad, so the first thing I need is a long range high gain antenna. Taking that wifi connection I'd then like to create a hotspot and share that within my boat to other devices.

Starting from scratch, what HW should I be looking to purchase? Is an antenna like this http://www.faculty-x.net/NET-WL-USB-UTP2450-12.htm any use?

How do I then create and transmit a hotspot? I know Connectify for Windows but apart from tinkering with Ubuntu I don't know enough about Linux on this front.

What other essentials should I be looking at (5v power, cables etc)? I'm assuming I'd hook the Pi up to my monitor and a USB keyboard.

Any tips/ideas/links to complete projects would be helpful, thank you.

[drgeoff]

If that is the only thing you ever want to do with that RPi, I think you will find it much easier and no more expensive to purchase a ready made item specifically intended to do it.

For £50 you can have eg a TP-Link TL-WA7210 outdoor wireless Access Point. You can mount that on your mast or a pole and it comes with a little injector to feed the power up the ethernet cable to it. Although named an Access Point it is (without hacking or 3rd party firmware) configurable to act as a Repeater or a Client.

Of course, you lose the opportunity to have fun with a RPi. Unless you get one in addition to the AP.

[demonboy]

Hi and thanks for the reply. I'm sorry though, I should have made the point clearer: I am on a boat and rely on 12v (or less). Anything that requires mains power isn't an option.

[ghans]

Check the power rating of the routers. I doubt that they accept 230 V AC directly.

A solution based on a Pi will probably be more power-hungry and not deliver enough throughput.

ghans