alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Hacking a $20 4G wireless hotspot into a texting device
Comments
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...
---
Aside, but it appears some MSM8916-based dongles run Android UI despite having no display: https://github.com/u0d7i/uz801#screenshots
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.
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.
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.
OpenStick is super old though, there are Linux and OpenWRT builders that track the upstream kernel, check hkfuertes and others.
Really cool!
One layer down from where this thread is looking: the SMS never lives in the Android userspace on these sticks. It sits in the modem's own store, either on the SIM or in modem memory, and the vendor web UI is just a thin thing reading it out of there.
So you don't need a messaging app that still runs on Android 4.x. If the device exposes an AT port, AT+CMGF=1 then AT+CMGL="ALL" dumps everything, and AT+CPMS picks which store you're reading. On the Qualcomm ones that keep the AT port hidden behind QMI, libqmi reaches the same thing through the WMS service.
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.