I have always loved the idea of having a mobile wireless hotspot. Having the ability to plug in a usb2 style dongle of an unlocked modem and load it up with a data tariff charged simcard was always something that sounded the right idea. a portable personal wireless hotspot. well i got my hands on one thanks to the awesome @orchid8 and i have been testing stuff out on it ever since.
i'm going to rapid fire a few things i have found in my first outing and experimenting with the hotspot and also link you up to a bunch of links and information i have found on the device. I have expanded on them below but you can find them on the twitpic i original uploaded.
no modem detected with the huawei e169
full scale panic mode on. i recently bought a usb huawei e169, great design really well thought out location for the simcard slot and a sd memory card slot. big problem thou, the cradlepoint only a certain firmware list of devices it currently can work with. in the modem panel nothing was showing for the modem. sods law the one that was listed was the huawei e220 which i sold a few months back after i unlocked it for any network. I'm glad i took notes as i did that unlock - i'm going to need to do it on this one if i want to use this in america. managed however to pick up a three locked one for fairly cheap money on ebay and it was detected straight away and after looking up the login details for linux was able to very quickly set the correct dialup settings for three. panic over.
talking about pay as you go
i really like the way that three (3) operate in the uk, the go in a shop and top up for 1,3,7 gig for £10, £15 and £25 is a good option. Obviously more would be nice but for those jobs when i know i'll only use it a few times a month it is a nice backup. I have not tested it yet but i would be keen to actually keep the unit powered up all the time so that others can use it so that i do not waste it. One thing i really do not like is that no matter how much bandwidth you have left it never rolls over. you have exactly 30 days to use it.
nokia phones and wpa and wpa2 setting
noticed that if you had the wpa2 setting on and not the auto setting them nokia phones had real trouble trying to get on the device.
authorizing devices
if you going to be allow people to use your cradlepoint over any amount of time you really want to go into the device and authorize your devices mac addresses so you do not have to constantly give out the login for it or go to a page to "login" - on a mobile device it can be really annoying.
dropouts and connection issues
i have noticed this a few times now when a device connects to the router and it effectively disconnects completely, almost like a total reboot. i'm going to be playing with hiding the ssid to see if that helps and making sure all the devices that are allowed to use it. Sorta annoys me that i have to do that thou, i would love to just be able to leave the wifi switched on walking around sxsw advertising my domain name and the various venues! ;)
increasing the battery time
i have seen a few places that explain how to build a battery pack to get a good 8hrs with the device and if i find a place that can do it i'll get them to build it for me - i'm terrible with a soldering iron (are you? - if not get in touch) in the meantime i have a little something organized and up my sleeve for sxsw that should give me 8-10 hrs per day between charges.
login menu and chat features
i do like the fact that the cradlepoint does almost radius like redirecting a page with a chat showing on it so that wifi users that do not have access can chat indirectly to the owner if they are on the page. it would be very neat if that could be tied to a DM tweet/twitter message so i could unlocked people i knew somehow. i would like to see the ability to customize this holding page further. i hope to speak to someone at cradlepoint - i think this could be an area they have not really thought about yet but it is heading in the right direction.
I want to thank cradlepoint as well for sponsoring the twestival gumballstyle project with some spare batteries and the incar charger - that helped a huge amount to keep it charged up as we got in and out of the car for the twestival gumball style charity raiser. it worked a treat and i can tell that i have a very powerful router that will take some additional time to really harness the power of the many features - really looking to playing with traffic shaping and the gps functionality.
Will update this post as i find/break new features! :)
