Man, these little Chinese knockoff ZumSPOTs are pretty robust:
pi-star@pi-star(rw):~$ uptime
15:34:35 up 13 days, 5:33, 1 user, load average: 1.23, 1.16, 0.68
It’s been running all that time on the battery box, although the battery box has been on the charger since last weekend. It ran the batteries down from 12.6 volts to 12.0 volts in five days. (It very quickly took the batteries from 12.8 volts in that photo to 12.6 volts. As I noted elsewhere online, these batteries aren’t spring chickens.)
It is a bit annoying that I had to go into expert mode and open the SSH window to issue an ‘uptime’ command, though. That ought to be on the dashboard, and unless I’ve somehow missed it, I don’t see it there. (I mean, I see the load averages, but I don’t see the “up 13 days, 5:33” part.) Ah well.
Much as I hate to buy another Chinese knockoff, I’m seriously considering it, since the “official” ZumSPOT boards are still not available. I see that they’re trying to add NXDN capability now. Hopefully at some point they’ll poke it with a sharp object and declare it finished, but meanwhile, everybody and his aged grandmother in Shenzen is selling JumboSpots dated 11/17/2017 for $42 and free shipping, I have a spare RPi Zero W and an OLED screen sitting here, and could put a second one together as soon as I have the JumboSpot in my hands…et voila, I have one to mount permanently in the car.
This is, FWIW, the same reason I gave up on Connect Systems’ vaporware CS7000 handheld (still in R&D!) and bought a Tytera MD-380. You can beat your product to death and keep adding features and swatting bugs and tweaking it till hell won’t have it, then finally get the product out there and find others have moved on. The Chinese are selling ZumSPOTs right now for half the price the developers say they’ll be selling them for through HRO, sometime in the sweet by and by.
Stick a fork in it, gentlemen. It’s done. And your market is drying up fast. You didn’t protect your IP well enough and the Chinese are eating your lunch in the marketplace.
DMR anywhere redux
DMR, General Commentary
3 March 2018 21:09Z
by Nathan Brindle - KC9YTJ
Man, these little Chinese knockoff ZumSPOTs are pretty robust:
It’s been running all that time on the battery box, although the battery box has been on the charger since last weekend. It ran the batteries down from 12.6 volts to 12.0 volts in five days. (It very quickly took the batteries from 12.8 volts in that photo to 12.6 volts. As I noted elsewhere online, these batteries aren’t spring chickens.)
It is a bit annoying that I had to go into expert mode and open the SSH window to issue an ‘uptime’ command, though. That ought to be on the dashboard, and unless I’ve somehow missed it, I don’t see it there. (I mean, I see the load averages, but I don’t see the “up 13 days, 5:33” part.) Ah well.
Much as I hate to buy another Chinese knockoff, I’m seriously considering it, since the “official” ZumSPOT boards are still not available. I see that they’re trying to add NXDN capability now. Hopefully at some point they’ll poke it with a sharp object and declare it finished, but meanwhile, everybody and his aged grandmother in Shenzen is selling JumboSpots dated 11/17/2017 for $42 and free shipping, I have a spare RPi Zero W and an OLED screen sitting here, and could put a second one together as soon as I have the JumboSpot in my hands…et voila, I have one to mount permanently in the car.
This is, FWIW, the same reason I gave up on Connect Systems’ vaporware CS7000 handheld (still in R&D!) and bought a Tytera MD-380. You can beat your product to death and keep adding features and swatting bugs and tweaking it till hell won’t have it, then finally get the product out there and find others have moved on. The Chinese are selling ZumSPOTs right now for half the price the developers say they’ll be selling them for through HRO, sometime in the sweet by and by.
Stick a fork in it, gentlemen. It’s done. And your market is drying up fast. You didn’t protect your IP well enough and the Chinese are eating your lunch in the marketplace.
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