...stuff I do and things I like...

finally I've managed to find the time to disassemble my CradlePoint PHS300 to take pictures of the hardware. The pictures can be found here: www.mulliner.org/hardware/cradlepoint_phs300

The hardware seems to be build based on the ubicom IP3023. From what I can see after a quick check of the SoC spec. this thing does not run Linux. This is sad since I really hoped this would be the case.

...now it fully supports the Huawai E220.

Finally CradlePoint updated the firmware for their mobile access point PHS300 that bridges your GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA USB device to wireless lan. The PHS300 supported the E220 already but it was not as nice as it could have been. Now it works like a charm. I can have my E220 plugged into the PHS and just need to flick the switch to have Internet access a couple of seconds later. Some other features they added are: support for a SIM pin and display of the GSM signal strength.

After this firmware upgrade the PHS300 is a really good piece of hardware that was totally worth the money.

since Friday I own a CradlePoint PHS300 (personal hotspot). The device basically is an WiFi (802.11 b/g) access point that connects to the Internet using a mobile phone or data card/adapter (just some hardware that has a USB connector and supports PPP). The nice thing about this device is that is has a build-in battery. The battery also powers the connected USB device. I just write this because connecting a USB GSM modem to an access point is not really new (access point like these have been around for quite some time now). The battery just makes it portable and that is what I want. My Nokia N810 is the main reason for buying it, well that and the cheap HSDPA SIM form Fonic.

Today I've hooked it up and got it to work with my Huawei E220 HSDPA USB adapter. Besides some small problems it works really good. The speed also seems good (got around 180K/s down stream). The problem with the E220 and the PHS300 is that the PHS300 doesn't seem to detect the E220 when they are plugged in before switching on the PHS300. So you have to power up the PHS300, wait a bit plug-in the E220 and it is working (also sometimes you have to unplug/re-plug the E220 again to have it detected). I already contacted CradlePoint support to tell them to fix this and I'm pretty sure they will do it since I'm not the only person who uses a E220 with a PHS300. See here. Also CradlePoint seems to publish firmware updates quite often so I think there is a good chance.

The PHS300 has an almost complete feature list: custom AT commands, dial-on-demand/autodial/manual dial selection, port forwarding, DynDns, WEP/WAP/WAP2, 802.11b/g/superG, dnscache, ntp list goes on.

Btw. buying this thing in Europe is a pain! I only found one online shop that had a decent price and where I could pay with PayPal since non of them accepted a NON-US credit card. This NON-US credit card thing is soo stupid anyway. Why do I have a credit card that is supposed to be accepted anywhere? Anyway the shop is GeminiComputers.

All in all this device looks really nice and I'll post some more about it after some weeks of using it. It will go into my laptop/gadget bag and I will carry it around with me most of the day.