Build your own devices, routers, relays, IoT etc.

[belusnecropolis]

Currently working with two 4x4 cards, life is getting spicy fellas.

[ingenium]

Currently working with two 4x4 cards, life is getting spicy fellas.

How are you orienting the antennas? And which antennas are you using?

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

[belusnecropolis]

1 hour ago, ingenium said:

How are you orienting the antennas? And which antennas are you using?

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
 

2x 1.7-2.7 panels dual port, 1x1.7-2.7(5') dual port, 2x 700-2.3 LPDA directionals. Aimed at the tower naturally, 3 in the lab, 2 lpda on roof. We are building one that hunts 4 and 5ca for a week or two, then they will settle in at home. 

EM20(m.2) does great with ATT, will test with T-Mobile in h721 deck later, I've worn in the lm960 on TMo in that thing, so that will be the traveller and I will swap carriers as new ones come online. This frees up an mPCIe slot for another WiFi, Zigbee, or Bluetooth radio maybe. Who knows?

All part of the plan to put stuff on the roof.

[645824]

Here is what my HTC 5G hub looks like.  It doesn't have an external antenna port, so I've oriented it along several polarizations to try to maximize the signal.  I also tried the window, but this window doesn't face the cell tower and it has a decorative metal grid on it.

So the best I get is 2 to 3 bars (the tiny icon in the upper-right corner of the screen presently showing 2 bars).  I would like to tell what that was in real units, but I haven't found it in the menu system yet, no "dBm" in the manual, and googling didn't help either...

Scott

 

[belusnecropolis]

EM20 on the test pole. Added that WiFi card too.

[belusnecropolis]

I ditched all my chinese supplied amazon quality coax finally. Enter shiny new LMR400 jumpers from times microwave, 2x 3 foot, 2x 5 foot. I am able to negotiate IPv6 on T-Mobile with no throttle, throughput is now steady at 65, I am coming up on 100 off peak and it is still, sadly, in my lab. Spending the extra 15 bucks a cable is worth it, plus the connectors don't come stripped out! 

I used their coax previously for my 25-30' runs to the roof and they worked great. I've just been blowing my spend on new radios and routers so this finally made the list. I picked up an gl dot inet ar750s and Dairyman over at Rooter is getting a build for that ready. Still working on getting support for Telit modems in Rooter's mountain of scripts.

My pile of EM7565's are always requiring dark magics to reanimate so I don't spend money with Sierra Wireless anymore, it is all so tiresome with them. I will pick up the new model LM960 in Q120 after they get a new firmware batched. The current 2nd model now has US certs and now does 4x4 MiMo on 2 contiguous carriers instead of just one. That is kind of nice.

After those good folks get all the software wizardy handled I will drop the LM960 on the ar750s and use that to find some band 30/14 in town.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[belusnecropolis]

On 10/6/2019 at 2:30 PM, belusnecropolis said:

I will drop the LM960 on the ar750s and use that to find some band 30/14 in town.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Both of these things worked out really good.

[belusnecropolis]

Just ordered (aliexpress keep your adblock up)this guy because why not have 3 4x4 radios. FCC manual

[645824]

This is a follow-up to my posts of Sept 7 and Sept 20.

Well, things haven't worked too well with the Sprint MiFi8000.  After a promising start, things degraded quickly and I started to experience the spontaneous reboot problem that Sprint MiFi 8000 and Verizon MiFi 8800L users have reported.  Originally I thought that it was related to the signal level -- but in the end I decided it was some thermal issue.  The units do get warm...  So I sent my 4 MiFi 8000 units back to Sprint.

And I was never happy with the Peplink/Pepwave Max On-The-Go (OTG) unit.  I had several problems with it and the support folks weren't very supportive.    

 

So I bought a second HTC 5G hub (now I have two).  Attached is a photo of the two units.  I got my old Cradlepoint COR-IBR1700 out of the closet and am presently using its load balancing capability.  The 1700 has 5 ethernet ports; 4 of which can be assigned as WAN or LAN and the 5th is set to WAN.  So I set those as 1 LAN and 4 WAN ports -- the LAN port ties into my house ethernet, and two of those WAN ports go to the ethernet ports on the back of each HTC 5G hub.  But the 1700 seems to be in Round-Robin mode even though I have it set to Device Usage mode (balanced usage) -- well, it clearly isn't doing that.  The one on the right is 75.51 GB while the one on the left is 116 MB.

At this point I've been very happy with this setup and the internet has worked continually for the past 3 weeks since I brought this system up.  No spontaneous reboots (e.g. MiFi 8000), no blank web-interface screens (e.g. Peplink MAX OTG), and no internet dropouts. 

Scott

 

Edited October 19, 2019 by 645824

[belusnecropolis]

On 10/12/2019 at 6:41 PM, belusnecropolis said:

Just ordered (aliexpress keep your adblock up)this guy because why not have 3 4x4 radios. FCC manual

OH IT ONLY WORKS WITH MODEM MANAGER OUT OF THE BOX!

We trying to crack it open now over on LTEhacks and the GoldenOrb crew is looking into it.

[belusnecropolis]

Drive by post. Just got back from an early morning cruise to find band 71 with the LM960 in the back.

Can now confirm this card will work 👍

This band does not appear in the bitmap so it can't be locked. It is always on in this firmware. Since band 66 is too it was a bit of work finding a place to test this. 

That is a story for later. I'm going to bed.

Have a great week everyone and stay free out there 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[belusnecropolis]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qKjuivFssWcLKUHf8

Here is my album of crappy screens confirming L600/LM960. I would set up the laptop and full logging and tracking suite but those things don't exist yet and I was driving at 12:30 am alone in the Carolina woods. So this is the best we get. 

[belusnecropolis]

I got the invite for Tmo home internet. Even though I use standard lines for internet I will take em up on this offer. 

Will be looking to see if the sim survives a device swap, if it is geo locked as all the tools on Reddit say, and what kind of optimization this line suffers.

[ingenium]

I got the invite for Tmo home internet. Even though I use standard lines for internet I will take em up on this offer. 
Will be looking to see if the sim survives a device swap, if it is geo locked as all the tools on Reddit say, and what kind of optimization this line suffers.

How did you get the invite?

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

[645824]

This is a follow-up to my posts of October 19.  Now I have 3 of the HTC 5G hubs.  

I haven't been able to get them better than 3 bars each.  So I'm tempted to open one up and attach an external antenna to the antenna connector.  According to the FCC filing, there are indeed connectors in there for some frequencies...  it just isn't clear if there is one for 2.5 GHz (Band 41) or if it is hard-soldered.

Scott

 

[belusnecropolis]

On 11/10/2019 at 5:04 PM, ingenium said:

How did you get the invite?

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
 

The line selected was not my main line, but a stationary WE826/MC7455. Definitely not near my billing address and the unit has no GPS so this tells us it was selected by the time of use on a tower that has capacity. The line averages 100Gb of usage a month.

I will do a teardown.

[645824]

In my search for a stronger signal for my HTC 5G hub, I was encouraged by this photo which shows two wires coming out of the back of the HTC 5G hub (photo 6 of 8 of the slide deck):

https://www.macitynet.it/al-mwc-2019-htc-5g-hub-la-rivoluzione-degli-hub-5g/

 

So I removed the SIM drawer, then pried off the back cover.  The back cover comes off easily except down near the ethernet connector -- there I had to use some force to get the cover off.

I was expecting to find a circuit board and perhaps some antenna connectors, but instead there is a fan and a cover.  That cover appears to be held in-place with jeweler's Torx screws.  My regular (slotted) and Allen jewelers drivers were either too large or too small, so I ordered a jeweler's Torx set from Amazon.

More news to follow...

Scott

PS   I would upload a photo, but it appears that I've used up my photo allotment here and it says that my Max total size is 0.03MB...

 

[ingenium]

The line selected was not my main line, but a stationary WE826/MC7455. Definitely not near my billing address and the unit has no GPS so this tells us it was selected by the time of use on a tower that has capacity. The line averages 100Gb of usage a month.

I will do a teardown.

Ahh I didn't know there were any T-Mobile plans/lines that worked for these modems. Was it a hotspot plan or just a regular line that you put in the modem?

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

[belusnecropolis]

1 hour ago, ingenium said:

Ahh I didn't know there were any T-Mobile plans/lines that worked for these modems. Was it a hotspot plan or just a regular line that you put in the modem?

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
 

Yeah, you just kind of have to make them work. Phone line, tablet lines work too.



 

[belusnecropolis]

19 hours ago, 645824 said:

 

 

So I removed the SIM drawer, then pried off the back cover. 

Step one on an amazing journey. This is the content we come here for.

Also, you can use any image hosting site to share. When making a high quality poast just share the direct link to the image and it will auto fill. They come from elaborate to simple. I use magaimg.net since it is an easy fileshare, more normie friendly sites like the imgur app or http://imgs.fyi/ work just as well.

[belusnecropolis]

So about a day into having this T-mo home internet running. I wanted to give it time to acclimate a connection in the incorrect zip code and allow any network controls to kick in. Since no one listened the first time when I mentioned these have no active GPS track I'll just put the results below from a zip code in the beautiful southeast, when it should be operating in the frozen tundra'd expanse far north of here. Just waiting for an irritable text from T-Mobile saying to place it near a window so it can connect to the correct cell 750 miles away . . .

 

Here is a speedtest connected to the old home site, the UI does not give much for radio information.

Here is an obligatory test from my champion tier build on the same site.



So far so good. I will tear it apart, swap sims, hang this thing on some better antenna and poast results as time allows and the week's progress concludes.

Have a great Sunday everyone and stay free out there! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[belusnecropolis]

Keeps leftovers warm.

[645824]

This is a follow-up to my post of Saturday, Nov 16 regarding my opening of my HTC 5G hub (since it doesn't have external antenna connectors):

1. remove the SIM card tray by putting a paperclip, or the included HTC eject pin, into the small hole.  A long tray comes out that contains the nano-SIM card.  Note that the SIM card has the gold-contacts facing down.  This is important when putting it back in later.

2. remove the back cover.  It has plastic clips, so I had to pry it off.  It comes off fairly easily except for the portion near the ethernet connector -- that took some force to get it around, over, and off.  There are no wires, so I just set the back cover aside.

3. use a Torx T5 driver to remove:

     a. 2 recessed screws towards the bottom

     b. 2 recessed screws on the right (but mine only had 1 screw installed; so perhaps I received a refurb from Sprint)

     c. 3 screws towards the top

     d. 2 screws on the left

4. use a finger nail between the front bezel (screen) and the cloth-covered housing.  I had to go all the way around 3 times in order to open it up enough to then pry it off.  There are no wires, so I just set the cloth-covered piece aside.

5. remove the two screws holding the fan (one at the top and one at the bottom).  The screw at the bottom is very short.  The screw at the top is the same length as all of the other T5 screws.

6. unstick the fan from the sticky pad on the left, then pivot on the remaining screw to rotate the fab out of the way.  I couldn't figure out how to remove that pivot screw without bending something -- so I left the fan attached to that screw.  Note that the fan's 4-pin connector will disconnect when pivoting.  When re-inserting that connector, the blue wire goes towards the top and the red wire goes towards the bottom.

7. remove the T5 screw in the lower-right corner.  This loosens the circuit board and I looked underneath.

I didn't see anything that I recognized as an antenna (nowadays, antennas are just flat metal plates; and there are several of those visible but nothing that says "Hi, I'm the 4G LTE antenna"). 

 

Attached is a photo showing the four tiny connectors on the circuit board.  According to the HTC photo link in my previous post, these connectors are in roughly the right place (where their 2 external coax cables exit the HTC 5G hub).  So if these are indeed antenna connectors, perhaps used for diagnostics at the factory, then that is good news.  I would just need to connect to one of those.   There are plenty of other of those connectors on the circuit board, and they have tiny little cables running to them.

Does anybody know what those connectors are called?  If they are tiny coax then I would just need a pigtail to get from that to TS9 or SMA.

Thanks,

Scott

[belusnecropolis]

37 minutes ago, 645824 said:

 

Does anybody know what those connectors are called?  If they are tiny coax then I would just need a pigtail to get from that to TS9 or SMA.

Thanks,

Scott

Most likely MHF4, or possibly u.fl size ports. I found what look to be u.fl on the T-Mobile Askey board and I am tearing it down after a late snack to find out the same thing. I have a ton of these handy in my lab but you can get MHF4 here and u.fl here with 2 day shipping. It's where I get all of mine and they work great. Just select what type of SMA jack you want on the opposing end in the dropdown.

[belusnecropolis]

23 hours ago, belusnecropolis said:

Keeps leftovers warm.

I forgot to check mileage yesterday but we put 51 miles on this thing and it worked and handled handoffs just fine.