compact GD-77 hotspot

[DG1YFX]

I ripped out the inside of a GD77 charging bay and fitted it with a step-up converter plus a TP 5100 LiIon charging circuit. So the hotspot will work with a single 5 volts power supply and can be used outside in the field even with a power bank.





More pictures here:
https://www.dg1yfx.de/dmr-start/gd-77/gd77-hotspot

73s,
Jens

[kt4lh]

Neat idea, but the USB B connector?? I expected a microUSB, but I suppose it's all the same and perhaps you had one around to savage.

Interesting tacking the pi onto the side of it with the custom cable, I might have to do a cable like that myself. I hate using the programming cable all the time for things.

It would make it bigger, but I wonder if you couldn't mount the charger base in a bit of a box with the pi in the front of the box to enclose that all a bit more, maybe mount the screen (if you use one) to that box? Just an idea.

[DG1YFX]

I had a very short USB B cable handy, so I decided to fit this socket instead of micro USB.
In fact I was thinking to power the PI through the GD77 battery. In this case you could run it without external power as well. But I did not trust the pins of the charge bay. And this setup would drain the battery too much. So I binned the idea.

73s,
Jens