Since I took office upstairs in one of the rooms my A1SE was cut off from any network access. Since the network was the only way to transfer files from, or to, my A1SE I had a bit of a problem. I left it at first since my new office was only going to be temporary before moving to a different location. But since I really like it in my new office and my wife could really use what was going to be my office for her hobby I decided to make the temporary location permanent.  Because of this and because I wanted to start working on some new material for my OS4.x programming section I needed a solution. I was thinking about using a repeater with a LAN port that I could use the connect my A1SE to. I wrote about this in my column (When the dust settles – Week 11) to which JetSetSkippy replied. He suggested I should use HomePlugs so I could provide network (and internet) acces through the power line to my A1SE upstairs. I completely forgot about this option. I gave it some thought before when I was still planning to create my new office in my garage but I thought it might now work because of the distance. I could not stop thinking about this solution so I decided yesterday (Saturday 17-3-2012) that I wanted to go for this solution. After checking online for some prices I came to the conclusion that the ICIDU HomePlug Starter Kit was the cheapest.

ICIDU HomePlug Starter Kit Box

ICIDU HomePlugs

Next up was to get my wife to go shopping (not much of a challange, eh?) and when we would be near Dixons (the place I wanted to purchase it) I would play my part. I would talk about my A1Se not having any network access and since I would be staying in my new office for good because I gave my new office location to my wife I would really love to have a solution for this. Maybe I could have a look in Dixons to see if I could get some ideas for this? Hook, line and sinker. Of course my wife is not from yesterday and after I purchase the HomePlug Starter Kit we had to stop at a shop and she asked if I would not mind waiting in the car and it could take some time but I had my HomePlug Starter Kit already so I would not really mind. It did take rather long but that was a small price to pay to get what I wanted.

I was really hoping it would work. When I got home I plugged one adapter in the extension cord next to the router and the other one upstairs in the wall socket. I decided to test it with my laptop first and it worked just great. Even with the downstairs adapter plugged in the extenstion cord (I know they can give you some problems) it worked without any problems. Next up was the A1SE and also with this it worked really great. It is really out of the box and plug and play. I am really impressed by it and with a price of around 55 Euro you get really great value for your money. I actually wrote most of this article on my A1SE using OWB. Now I can start working on some more articles for my OS4.x programming section.


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