Show HN: Hacking a $20 4G wireless hotspot into a texting device

walrus01•about 2 hours ago

Based on the work the person has done, if they wanted to make something with an exceedingly long battery life, and the battery setup there already seems to be basically a 1S li ion, they could graft in a back side battery holder for two high quality 18650 cells in parallel. It would probably last weeks.

iamnothere•about 1 hour ago

A 10000mAh pouch battery would take up less room and provide more battery life. They are almost as cheap as 18650s too.

walrus01•4 minutes ago

The neat thing about 18650s though is that you can put a battery door on it and make them swappable, if a person used a holder that can accommodate button top protected 18650 cells. The same cells can also be shared by a bunch of good quality flashlights and headlamps. I have several extremely useful headlamps from "sofirn" that take my choice of cell and have a built in USB-C charging port and charge circuitry protected behing a gasket and twist-open ip67 sealed cap. The pouch battery would be better as an integrated all in one product but also makes the thing a bit less modular.

jsisto•about 1 hour ago

How is a 10000mAh pouch more energy dense than an 18650?

bri3d•about 1 hour ago

By not having void air space in between cylindrical cells like you'd get with two 18650s? It's mostly just a matter of packaging.

Pouches can be made to have better volumetric density than cylindrical cells quite easily, which is why laptops aren't generally full of cylinder cells anymore; the challenge is just providing them enough external support/compression and swelling allowance, which can be accomplished through chassis design.

iamnothere•about 1 hour ago

Pouch cells are lighter per mAh due to the lack of metal casing. But more than the casing, the form factor is better for a pocketable device. The cylindrical form factor sticks out, usually wastes some space, and can’t be neatly tucked behind a board or display.

msm8916•10 minutes ago

OpenStick is super old though, there are Linux and OpenWRT builders that track the upstream kernel, check hkfuertes and others.

VinnyBarreca•26 minutes ago

It would be pretty cool to put Hermes Agent or some agent system on that thing, assuming the OpenStick build has enough RAM/storage. That would be fire.

notpushkin•about 2 hours ago

This is really nice! It so happens that I’ve just bought a $10 4G dongle [1], guess I’ll have to check what’s inside now :-)

[1]: like this: https://img.joomcdn.net/ea91b4418997d83d802339fad0bbcf878b9d...

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Aside, but it appears some MSM8916-based dongles run Android UI despite having no display: https://github.com/u0d7i/uz801#screenshots

harhargange•about 3 hours ago

I often ditch my phone and carry my hotspot device for my internet. The only drawback is that for viewing my texts and OTPs i end up putting the sim in my phone or opening up the web interface on my laptop. This seems to work very well as a dumbphone per se.

blobbers•about 1 hour ago

If you move to an Apple set up, the phone can act as a hotspot and there is no need to take out your sim. Also... you have a physical sim card? I thought those became obsolete.

newhotelowner•about 3 hours ago

How do you check sms/OTP/text using web interface on your laptop?

notpushkin•about 2 hours ago

This probably depends on your particular dongle model. Back in 3G era, some carriers offered USB modems with SMS locked out in the firmware, but you could flash a firmware from a different operator (also install their variant of software, the only difference being the added SMS tab and a different skin) and then you can text and even use USSD! (No calls, though.)

knowaveragejoe•about 2 hours ago

https://messages.google.com/web/ is one way I'm aware of, I'm sure there's others depending on the messages app used.

notpushkin•about 2 hours ago

It seems those modems run Android 4.x with the stock messaging app: https://github.com/u0d7i/uz801#screenshots

But I guess you can install a custom messaging app that would sync the messages? (If there’s one that still supports such an old version of Android)

xx_ns•about 4 hours ago

This is a really cool project! A mini cyberdeck that doesn't seem too impractical to use. Repurposing the Clicks keyboard is a genius idea.

dgf18•about 3 hours ago

Really cool!

Show HN: Hacking a $20 4G wireless hotspot into a texting device

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