Battery

Portable Hot Stop with Battery Pack

Ben2 Comments

The new OpenSpot3 has come out with an internal battery. You might ask why? Well there is two common issues that is mostly raised with almost all hot spots. One is the range – I have addressed this in my BlueDV post if you want to make your own long range hotspot. However the other issue is it isn’t very portable.

I have two OpenSpot2 hotspots and enjoy them very much. I can cross modes easily all by using the one radio. You used to have to get one radio per band which was a lot more expensive. Anyway I can take the OpenSpot2 in the car and plug it into the car battery and run it via my mobile phone which works well. However what if I want to go for a bike ride or walk without the car?

The main issue is not having the battery of the car when you walk or ride your bike. This is perhaps one reason why the OpenSpot3 has an internal battery. For the rest of us, you can still do it.

Below is a picture of my setup. I took this picture in outback South Australia. At the top of the picture is a small pocket size battery which actually has two USB plugs, so I could plug in my HotSpot and my mobile phone. It even has a torch on it and has a lot of charge (15,000 mAh 2.4 Amp) so it wasn’t the cheapest one available. I could have gone a lot cheaper however we also used this battery pack for other things while we were in remote Australia for several days.

To the left of the photo is my GD-77, my hotspot and my phone. With this setup, I was able to talk the world!

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Mini Keyboard Options

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I bought this wireless keyboard/mouse which was very cheap. It does come with a USB dongle. It has a fantastic range since it is 2.4GHz RF. The back also has good grip which apparently isn’t common on all models. You can select what colour you want the plastic to be also.

Setup

Setup couldn’t be easier. Make sure it has batteries installed, some come with a rechargeable, mine required triple A batteries. Make sure the switch on the top side of the keyboard it to the left position for it to turn on – it should light up when you do this. Then in the battery compartment will be the USB dongle. Just plug in the USB dongle before powering up (if it is into an Android box), then it will connect and work fine straight away. If your model came with the battery, there may be a cord to charge the unit also.

Touch Pad

The top part of the keyboard in the touch pad area controls your mouse position. Using two fingers will scroll up and down the scroll bars. Unfortunately two finger zooming does not work. Right click can be done by a simultaneous two finger tap. You can turn the touch pad on or off by pressing Fn + F8.

Changing the Touch Pad Tracking Speed

All you have to do is press the blue Fn (function) button down the bottom left corner, then press the space bar.

Shortcuts

The keyboard comes with the following shortcuts at the top of the keyboard.

Far left Shortcuts

Over the far left side are media buttons, including volume up and down, pause and play, next track

Middle shortcuts

Either side of the touch pad are shortcuts, then are the following from top to bottom in order

Left Side of Touch PadRight Side of Touch Pad
1. Open Music Player App1. Open Google Search
2. Open Email App2. Go home button
3. Mute button3. Internet Browser
4. Mouse left button ( this is also on the far left of the letters below on the top)4. Mouse right button (this is also on the far left of the letters below on the bottom)

Far right Shortcuts

Over the right side at the top are directional buttons with an OK button in the middle.

Sleep Mode

The Keyboard will auto sleep and wake-up to save the battery. When the keyboard is idle for 3 minutes, it will go into auto sleep mode, and all LED indicators will turn off.

Keyboard Glowing Colours

Some keyboards glow at night. Unfortunately mine foes not, but if yours does, you just press blue the Fn key down the bottom left and the F2 key to change the colours. Press Fn-F2 again to change to the next colour and so on. This will give you the three standard colours. However, if your feeling nerdy, you can press and hold down the Fn key, then using your thumb on the touch pad, move it left and right to get all the other colours. There are 7 different colours in total.

If you want to be a geek of all the nerds, you can do the RGB spectrum, but pressing and holding F2 and then scrolling your thumb across left to right on the touch pad, then let go. It will scroll through all the colours automatically. You can still use the touch pad as normal while it automatically changes colours. I guess not having this saves some power also, however it does turn off every 30 or so seconds. There is a switch up the top right on the side of the keyboard that will turn it off also.

Fuction Keys

Apart from what I have already mentioned, you can do the following functions using the blue function key (Fn) found down the bottom left corner.

  • Fn + Fn = Enter into pair mode
  • Fn + F7 = take a screen shot
  • Fn + F8 = turn on or off the touch pad
  • Fn + F9 = F11 key
  • Fn + F10 = F12 key
  • Fn + Back = Delete
  • Fn + Page Up = Home

Other Keyboards

Here is a review on several other keyboards of similar size. This is not my video, but thought it gave a good quick overview of several models available.

Conclusion

The size of the keyboard is just right, not to small so you can’t find it or use it easily, but not to big so it takes over the desk or armchair. It works well with my Android TV device, but understand it does work on other devices such as windows, Raspberry Pi etc.

If I was going to buy it again, I may get the one with the inbuilt battery installed that can be re-charged, however once the batter goes, you almost have to replace it. My model could be loaded up with rechargeable batteries you can buy from anywhere.

Before I was using this Keyboard, I used a USB mouse, and while in some ways that is easier than a touch pad, to have a full keyboard and the touch pad all cordless with a good range is fantastic.

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