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Looks pretty pocketable (and gorgeous) to me.

I’ve been rocking a Minimal Phone for about 6 or 7 months now, and man am I excited to have options for QWERTY phones again.

just plain boredom with glass slabs

This. So much this. They’re all boring, too tall, and too skinny with about as much personality as a used up dryer sheet. It’s like they’re designed solely for scrolling an endless feed of mind-numbing slop. I remember being able to actually do things on my older smartphones (RDP, SSH, editing documents/spreadsheets, etc). You can still do those things now, but you basically have to break out a bluetooth keyboard to do anything more than the most basic things and it feels like trying to look at a panorama through a keyhole.

Love my deck … Kind of got side tracked gaming

You sound like me lol: Side tracked by the device’s primary purpose.

Ok, thanks. I may leave all the bells and whistles enabled for this first rundown test, and do another one after with the GPS disabled, etc. I like the idea of having the GPS always on (with smart position enabled) but don’t really think it’s necessary while sitting at my desk in the office.

I’ll try that.

In your uses, is the battery life measured while being connected over Bluetooth or just how long the device runs on its own? This is the first day I’m running it through its paces and after 3 hours, it’s down to 83% / 3.98V. That’s with GPS, RX boosted gain enabled, and connected to my phone via BT.

Nice. I’ll look into that one.

My ultimate goal is getting a decent-sized touchscreen, putting an LCARS-themed HomeAssistant UI on it, and hanging it up as a functional MSD for my house.

Yeah, I saw that in the docs but didn’t have a node with a “buzzer” until now so just kind of forgot about that feature. I think it uses the Nokia format if I recall correctly. I was just surprised the default notification tone was one I recognized. I may play around with different ones (would love to hear the classic Nokia tune again in all of its piezo glory).

Might also find a few I like and keep them in a text file on my phone to switch them up once in a while.

Good to know! A full day is more than sufficient for my cases but good to know I can stretch it if need be :)

After I posted, I made it even more practical by attaching it to the back of my phone stand. The magnets keep it securely in there even at a ~45 degree angle.

Eventually I’m going to get some USB-C socket boards and replace the USB-A male connector on the charge cable with a USB-C female socket and make a cutout for that. Basically to allow connecting a USB-C cable to the dock to help with cable management.

Another mod I’ve been thinking about is either using a different design or hollowing out this model and putting one of my 3,000 mAh batteries inside with charge and boost circuits to make it work like the Airpod chargers (e.g. charge the cradle, cradle charges the T1000e).

I did, and it doesn’t look puffy thankfully. I’ve got 4 more in the same case and will check on them soon. 3 of those 4 aren’t used often, though.

Apparently I said “Joe Dirt” sometime earlier in my life and my wish came true.

Yeah, same. I never could find a good case that was small enough for what I wanted for an EDC but also had space for a rotary encoder. Then the 2.7 firmware comes out with the 1-button navigation and now it just works. A little awkward to get used to, but nice that I don’t have to make the thing bigger to accommodate a rotary encoder.

Excellent. I’m excited. It should be delivered tomorrow.

Question: Is the case able to be opened at all? Like, if I wanted to pull out the i2c and a power + ground to a second set of pogo pins? Was just thinking that the only thing I’d miss is the ability to send canned messages from the device. The 2.7 firmware lets you do that now with the one-button navigation. Thinking something like a 3D printed sleeve that has a little i2c OLED screen and maybe an extension of the user button

If you’re provisioning several or just like to have a good baseline for setting up future nodes, I like to use the Python client and make a provisioning script. I feel like it’s way uglier than it should be, but I’ve found that even though the docs say you can specify multiple config options in one call, they don’t all apply. So I have to do them in stages and wait for it to reboot between executing each config.

This is my baseline provisioning script for reference. I like to have a private default channel but then also set the radio frequency manually to the “default” LongFast of 906.875 MHz and create the LongFast channel as a secondary so I can communicate with people using the default config (which is very common). This also lets me relay for them (and vice versa) while not sharing my location and such with the public mesh.

#!/bin/bash
# Optionally set the device name and short name.  If not provided, the user info step is skipped
DEVICE_NAME=$1
DEVICE_SHORT_NAME=$2

# Admin key is optional but I set it on all of my managed nodes. If not using that, comment out the line further down where this is referenced
ADMIN_KEY="{PUBLIC_KEY_OF_ADMIN_NODE}"

# Use a private default channel.  
PRIMARY_CHANNEL_KEY="{BASE64_PRIVATE_KEY_FOR_PRIMARY_CHANNEL}"
PRIMARY_CHANNEL_NAME="{PRIMARY_CHANNEL_NAME}"


function wait_for_reboot {
  echo "Press <ENTER> once device has rebooted"
  read a
}

echo "Setting LoRa Region..."
meshtastic --set lora.region US
wait_for_reboot

# If device name and short name are supplied, set those
if [ -n "$DEVICE_NAME" ] && [ -n $DEVICE_SHORT_NAME ]
then
  echo "Setting Device Name..."
  meshtastic \
    --set-owner "$DEVICE_NAME" \
    --set-owner-short "$DEVICE_SHORT_NAME"
  wait_for_reboot
fi

# Set most options
meshtastic --set display.screen_on_secs 120 \
  --set display.units IMPERIAL \
  --set device.led_heartbeat_disabled false \
  --set telemetry.device_telemetry_enabled true \
  --set lora.use_preset true \
  --set lora.modem_preset LONG_FAST \
  --set security.admin_key base64:$ADMIN_KEY \
  --set lora.override_frequency 906.875 

wait_for_reboot

meshtastic --set-canned-message "Affirmative|Negative|Unknown|Acknowledged|Require Assistance|Check-In Good|Check-In Bad|Status?"
wait_for_reboot


meshtastic \
  --ch-index 0 --ch-set psk base64:$PRIMARY_CHANNEL_KEY --ch-set name "$PRIMARY_CHANNEL_NAME" \
  --ch-index 1 --ch-set psk base64:AQ== --ch-set name "LongFast"
wait_for_reboot

meshtastic --set-time

Out of curiosity, what case are you using?

Most of my nodes are using the HT Pocket case. My EDC one was the one without the external antenna, but the bulk of my other nodes use the same case with the external antenna cutout.

The fit is pretty tight in that model, but I love how compact it is. It also has a belt clip model I printed which is nice for strapping some of the antenna-clad units to trees when we go camping.

I don’t recall the exact repo URL for the commissioner, but I made a guess based off the rest of the repos for the other components. Wayback doesn’t show anything for it.

Honestly, I’m just done with that project. I was only testing it with my Authelia setup internally but was going to start using it in “prod” for my homelab stuff when the original tool went missing. I just don’t want to deal with a dev who would enshittify their own project before they’re bought by a big player.

Kindof a modern take on a CB radio from ye olden days. Mostly just keep a node with me when I’m out and about just to see who I can pick up and from what distances.

Edit: I was tired and on mobile when I replied that, but here’s a mostly comprehensive list of what I use mine for:

• I just think they’re neat!
• I’ll pass a node out to everyone in the group when we go camping, hiking, etc. They’re all populated with a generic set of canned messages you can send from the device itself (so no phone is required). Messages are like “You good?”, “Ack”, “Need help”, “Checking in”, etc.
• The campsite we use most is about 2 miles from civilization, into the forest, down and around a mountain, and by the river. We have a friend who lives at the mouth of the road / edge of civilization. On my way down to the campsite, I stop every so often to “drop a buoy” by which I mean I strap a node to a tree to act as a relay. There’s no cell reception at all there, so this lets us relay up to the friend’s house if we need anything or have an emergency. LOL, one time we asked her to go get us more ice and beer and she delivered!
• Better to have it and not need it in case of disaster. I keep my primary channel private but set the radio parameters for the “default” channel so I can relay for users using the default config and vice-versa. The “default” Meshtastic channel is a secondary in my config, so I can talk with people using the default config.

Oh no offense taken at all, haha. Was just making a confession and trying to be funny about it.

I mentioned it to you in another post, but I just bought the Seeed T1000e today. I’ve had my eye on it for a while now and have heard lots of good things about it. Will be excited when it arrives Sunday. It’ll be replacing my Heltec V3 (RIP) everyday carry that decided to self destruct last night.