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Comment by HotGarbage | Hacker News Reader

Leaving hotspots connected via USB 24/7 is a no-no, and people put some effort trying to run them without a battery:

- https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/trick-the-hotspotphone-...

- https://jibout.com/verizon-7730l-mifi-hotspot-battery-bypass...

- https://old.reddit.com/r/Calyx/comments/lorkrv/running_mifi_...

I feel like there's some liability on Netgear's part here: People can't be expected to know they can't leave it connected and a charging circuit should not constantly feed the battery.

It's a shame there aren't more affordable connectivity options for projects like this. Hotspots with batteries tend to be a lot cheaper than battery-less routers and USB dongles. The latter of which isn't even available for 5G.

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I have a battery powered hotspot from my provider. Like a phone, it refuses to run off usb without a battery installed. But it yells at you and shuts down when plugged in for too long. I need to have it online all the time.

I "fixed" it by plugging the charger into an old school mechanical timer. Every six hours, it runs off the battery for 30 minutes. Has been working great for 2 years.

This just seems like a ridiculous consumer-safety violation. How is it legal to sell these things?

> It's a shame there aren't more affordable connectivity options for projects like this.

There's tons of options, and the "professional" grade routers aren't much more expensive than that consumer grade AC800s. With the one I have I get a removable SIM, dual SMA antenna connectors for MIMO with the ability to have an external high gain antenna, 5 ethernet ports, and a box that runs a version of ddWRT that I have full control over.

The AC800s is $200, my modem was $350.

Oh? Any links?

https://mofinetwork.com/

Used hotspots are $12 on eBay. The Franklin T9 is hackable and fun, but it would be nice to have Ethernet and OpenWRT for less than $100

I haven't used either of these personally but have seen them suggested before:

GL.iNet GL-AR750S-Ext

Wiflyer WE826-T

I have a ZTE MF286D that I picked up for €80 last year.

Installing OpenWRT requires soldering wires to access the serial port, so I haven't bothered yet (the native OS works fine for what I need), but as I understand everything is supported.

There are some frameworks that allow you to change OS without touching the hardware. Converted a Three UK one to Openwrt like this.

> charging circuit should not constantly feed the battery

To me this seems like a common misconception. I can’t see it being true - we’d see so many more battery fires out there if this was true, including in this very case (his setup would’ve burnt down within days in that case).

It's not likely to cause a fire but it will ruin the battery. Generally it causes swelling which physically damages the charging connection.

Why is that such a problem if it’s apparently fine to keep phones and other small devices connected 24/7? Aren’t charging circuits standard parts? I would have expected them all to work more or less the same

It's not fine unless it has protection built in which is rare. After a few years battery will swell.

I wrote a script that scrapes the hotspot web interface to turn off a smart plug when it's at 90% and turn back on at 60%.

It might be better to buy a USB modem instead of a hotspot.

Rocket sticks come to mind.

In the UK, USB 4G LTE adapters are cheaply available 2nd hand. Plug that into a SBC and away you go.

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