Definitely watched the entire video. I'm still trying to grasp all of these digital modes. The cross-mode feature is handy for those modes that I don't have - I think. Again, someone needs to do a series on digital modes and the how, why and what of them. It would take a series of videos not just one.
The Openspot 4 does not crossmode to Dstar u need the Pro :( also the battery is removable you purchase a complete battery with the rear white plastic housing included for about £60 there is now a PTT app for the Openspot 4 Pro works on ios and Android thanks for a very professional excellent video .
Matt OMG Awesome I am taking the test soon and DMR peaked my interests and I have to repeaters close by .. Was looking at Raspberry Pi - This thing is awesome buying one for sure... Awesome video thanks for helping me make up my mind...... WOW!!!
Of course I watched to the end; you think I'm a fair-weather ham or something..? What I'm interested in hearing about is the so-called Pro version and which modes it supports for hardware vocoding. I expect it'll just be DSTAR/DMR, like everything else. I'd like to find something besides a Quantar that does P25 hardware vocoding. Putting a Quantar on my belt makes it kind of hard to walk...
I got through to the end... That OS4 looks soooo much faster than my 3... I just cant justify spending that kind of money again. There's also a neat feature on the 4 of disconnecting from a talkgroup by pressing the power button 3 times in case someone is blabbing on for ever. nice.
Ordered one for that Dayton special, then come here to see what I bought;-) Not that bad, I have 2 OS1s and 2 OS2s. The web audio and D-Star transcoding look to be very useful for an ID-52 owner.
It looks great but PORTS and PORTALS. As seasoned traveller, hotel WFi is a pain. I end up buying local SIM and using my Huwai 4g MiFi. In the office, my corp WFi is restricted even though as Admin, I can't add ports pass through.,.. well I could but no. I have Jumbo hotspot clones and these can be worse.I end up on MiFi and configure as per local conditions but the Openhotspot 4 seems great., They need to add a 3/4/5G modem and it would be great. As it's a US designed device, adding. CDMA etc would help for compatibility. Thanks for another great video, when I know I'm coming back to UK, I'll order one in advance. Oh, the cross-mode from D-Star is great, something Pi-Star can't do yet. Would be nice to have a Digital Radio that can do all modes. Dream on..
I’m probably getting one of these soon. I so wish it would also transcode the new M17 protocol, but it looks like it gives you pretty much everything else.
Thanks Mark. There’s always the possibility that I will compile another video covering any topics or questions raised in the comments. Thanks for watching .
I have the OS3 and it's just 2 clamshells clipped together. I'm not about to open mine as it's fairly new, but it sure looks like they can be separated.
I think I do like the (digital) cross-mode feature... but I'm not sure I know enough about that feature and (generic) digital mobile radio modes in general to be confident I should care in my situation. Last year our local Amateur club bought Yaesu Fusion repeater hardware (steep promo discounts for clubs offered at the time). I voted for that acquisition, but with the lurking worry that Fusion is Yaesu proprietary and I wasn't likely to buy into Yaesu equipment anytime soon, myself. So I assume that this cross-repeater capability would allow me to use a less expensive - say, a Baofeng - HT through this openSPOT and be able to talk to my buds on our local Fusion repeater (assuming we have Wires-X and Internet connectivity at the Fusion repeater) ? Edit: Ha, checked the openSPOT prices and decided my question above is academic but not important for me. I might as well buy a nice Yaesu HT or mobile radio instead ;)
When people talk about "cross mode" digital capabilities they are talking about moving between digital protocols. For instance, you have a Yaseu HT (so, C4FM branded as "fusion") and you want to talk with a group of DMR users in a DMR "talk group". Of you have a DMR radio and you want to join a D-Star "reflector". The hotspots can do this because the voice is already digitized. It's just protocol translation which general purpose computers are good at. They can not do plain old analog FM to digital "cross mode" because they don't have analog to digital converters, so no way to capture just the voice signal from the RF stream. OpenSpots are nice, work well, and are user friendly - but in the end don't do anything you need that a Raspberry PI with an MMDVM modem running PI-Star software won't do for a whole lot less money (and that even factors in how inflated the prices of the PIs are at the moment).
@@TechMindsOfficial If at least with Pi-Star it was possible to only add an AMBE key on the raspberry to transcode to D-Star that would already be good.
I'm pretty solid on "why". It's the darned e-waste issue first - expected to either throw valuable Lithium chemistry in the landfill or find some recycling facility that may just do the same thing. Or second, but related, I could circumvent the e-waste issue by just replacing the battery myself... if allowed. /often do things that aren't "allowed" anyway
@@Randrew I'm not about to drop a substantial amount of cash on something that is inevitably destined for land-fill purely because the battery dies. Then there's the morality/environmental stuff. It's just wrong, smaller companies like Shark RF are surely able to buck the trend. They can still invite new sales by innovating with new features.
Considering it can be charged or powered from a 5V USB Source I think it’s extremely versatile. I guess it’s too early to say how many battery cycles it can handle, but who cares! If it’s that much of an issue in a few years time then just replace the battery inside, I’m sure there will be something available IF the need arises.
@@TechMindsOfficial I thought the battery was not replaceable, if it is that changes everything. I got the impression it was sealed or something. If typical users can replace it, good job Shark RF.
Hi Im setting up the openspot 4 to my home wifi and my phones hotspot . Ive set my homes wifi to SSID #1 and my mobile to SSID #2 but in my current configuration it shows DNS SERVER #1 with the ip address but the DNS SERVER #2 says not set is this normal
I’m thinking, I’m thinking… The battery I think is a issue, how long does one load work if you really using the Spot ? And as I saw the price, I think I watch the market an wait, there are lots of repeaters around me. Thanks for your great work, by the way, great audio❗️ 73 HB3XBL 👍🇨🇭
Ack, at 12:06 I'm reminded why I - a person immersed in code, analog signal acquisition and embedded controls systems since the mid-1980s - loath modern, narrowband, *digital* voice communication. With a pretty obviously clean RF signal, the digitized, companded, lossy-compressed and reconstituted voice is riddled with digital aliasing, especially at the higher audible frequencies where the most information has been sacrificed for bandwidth. Add in any data loss in the RF path and it becomes a nightmare to listen.
@@TechMindsOfficial Don't know if there's sarcasm in there or not... Maybe this "degradation" I reference started with the POTS [x]-law compression algorithms used for long-haul trunks. But those were (originally) shifted over fairly high reliability, packet switched networks and never had to decompress to better than the POTS bandwidth which was crap from the beginning. Even modern "wired" telephony is suffering from being transported (primarily) over IP networks these days with end-to-end QoS settings non-existent or mostly ignored. And forget digital cellular tech - variable latency there seems to battle with dropped packets in a contest to ruin voice communications. I'm a little surprised that "two-way" voice apps for smart phones aren't more popular here in the US. My wife uses one to talk to her family back in China and it works very well: Press the "speak" button and talk. Wait and soon a very clear, relatively wideband, no noticeable aliasing or dropped data response comes back from the other party.
No not sarcasm, I’m British :) Joking aside I do agree with you with regards to digital quality. In this day and age we should be experiencing crystal clear audio comms. However, bandwidth and power has a lot to do with digital specifications. There are many positives to digital, but one that I have personally tested and experienced is that on harsh band conditions a nFM signal can be hard to hear, but digital, with its narrow bw, gets through and makes the contact. Not BBC quality, but it makes the contact. That was my point, there are positives to digital.
In the UK if you order a new Broadband Service your home phone is now provisioned over VOIP, even if your line is copper. Makes it easier for Service/Support, only dealing with one set of Hardware. A new shiny Modem/Router and Fancy Digital Handsets, Quality is pretty good, not sure what Codecs used
@@MINI-4X4-RADIO Quite a few years back when I last had a "land line" it was by VoIP provided by my cable TV/Internet provider. I got the chance to quiz one of their back-room technicians at the time of provisioning and she informed me that, yes the reason the modem had a backup battery was to support our federally mandated 911 emergency call system. She also told me that they (at their discretion?) applied QoS settings that should make its legibility at least as good as analog POTS. I never noticed any problems with its audio.
Hallo zusammen, hat jemand Erfahrungen über die maximalen Entfernungen zwischen Openspot - Mobile Phone und Openspot - Funkgerät in der Wohnung oder im freien Feld? 73s!!
It is also helpful NOT to have any special characters in your iPhone's name...like: Jeremy's iPhone may cause problems connecting, especially on older hotspots.
Ordered one today, as they are on special for Dayton. I'll let you know how it goes with my ID-52 soon. Interested how well D-Star transcodes to other modes.
The video implies that the openSPOT 4 only works with iOS devices. This is totally false. Since this uses a web interface, Android devices work just fine.
Thank you. This was very helpful. I am new to digital but not new to ham radio. I'm 70 years old and not very computer savy. This helped a lot.😊
Definitely watched the entire video. I'm still trying to grasp all of these digital modes. The cross-mode feature is handy for those modes that I don't have - I think. Again, someone needs to do a series on digital modes and the how, why and what of them. It would take a series of videos not just one.
So far on d star, there seems to really no nobody there
I watched all of the video, and after a nap I will watch it again to see what I missed, there is a lot to absorb. I will get a pro model soon.
I have one on order as my first hotspot. Yes I made the end. All the best VK1PDW, Peter W.
Watched the whole thing. Just got my Open Spot 4
The Openspot 4 does not crossmode to Dstar u need the Pro :( also the battery is removable you purchase a complete battery with the rear white plastic housing included for about £60 there is now a PTT app for the Openspot 4 Pro works on ios and Android thanks for a very professional excellent video .
I watched the video to the end. I love how you explain thing. I always look for your videos first before anything else. Well done.
Thanks you
Thank you Jerry! Have a great weekend sir!
These devices are great. This was a perfect review. Thanks again.
Great Info. Yes, please offer more videos on the other modes. I'm thinking, thinking, thinking now. Thanks.
Yes I watched to the very end. Good for the first timers. But I enjoyed it as well. I have and continue using my os3, and Rfinder radio.
Matt OMG Awesome I am taking the test soon and DMR peaked my interests and I have to repeaters close by .. Was looking at Raspberry Pi - This thing is awesome buying one for sure... Awesome video thanks for helping me make up my mind...... WOW!!!
I need to get one of these. I'm still using the original openSPOT blue box. AE5DW.
Love your video this looks easier then the bridgecom hotspot
Watched the whole thing. Very impressive.
Watched entire video.
Existing PiStar user here but the OpenSPOT4 looks great!
Fascinating info, watch until the end.
Very informative, as always. We need to see more of your cat!
Cheers, Fraser MM0EFI
Considering an OpenSpot 4 Pro. This was a very helpful (and professionally produced) video. Thanks. And yes, watched to the end :-)
Watched the whole thing. Thanks.
Of course I watched to the end; you think I'm a fair-weather ham or something..?
What I'm interested in hearing about is the so-called Pro version and which modes it supports for hardware vocoding. I expect it'll just be DSTAR/DMR, like everything else. I'd like to find something besides a Quantar that does P25 hardware vocoding. Putting a Quantar on my belt makes it kind of hard to walk...
That's my wife at the start of the video! She is addicted to DMR.
Hey Donald! Thanks for the comment! Hope you’re wife didn’t mind me using the Audio! 73
Well done. Definitely want to get one of these at some point.
I watched the whole video :) Thank you. Great information!
Thanks a lot, I’m trying to do
D Star on my Anytone handheld
Great video. It answered a lot of questions for me, thanks.
You're the ASMR of Ham Radio.
Great Video! Thank You!
I got through to the end... That OS4 looks soooo much faster than my 3... I just cant justify spending that kind of money again. There's also a neat feature on the 4 of disconnecting from a talkgroup by pressing the power button 3 times in case someone is blabbing on for ever. nice.
It is surprisingly quick! And I didn’t even know about the power button trick, I’ll have to try that. Thanks for watching!
Great video; looking forward to getting my Openspot 4
Ordered one for that Dayton special, then come here to see what I bought;-) Not that bad, I have 2 OS1s and 2 OS2s. The web audio and D-Star transcoding look to be very useful for an ID-52 owner.
It looks great but PORTS and PORTALS. As seasoned traveller, hotel WFi is a pain. I end up buying local SIM and using my Huwai 4g MiFi. In the office, my corp WFi is restricted even though as Admin, I can't add ports pass through.,.. well I could but no. I have Jumbo hotspot clones and these can be worse.I end up on MiFi and configure as per local conditions but the Openhotspot 4 seems great., They need to add a 3/4/5G modem and it would be great. As it's a US designed device, adding. CDMA etc would help for compatibility. Thanks for another great video, when I know I'm coming back to UK, I'll order one in advance. Oh, the cross-mode from D-Star is great, something Pi-Star can't do yet. Would be nice to have a Digital Radio that can do all modes. Dream on..
Excellent and informative video
Great video! Now I just need to pull the trigger and get one LOL 🤣
made it to the end thanks....
so funny you have audio of Mary. She's on all the time.
Watched to the end.
I’m probably getting one of these soon. I so wish it would also transcode the new M17 protocol, but it looks like it gives you pretty much everything else.
Made it to the end! Great video thanks.
Great video. Not long enough for me. I like long video's on thing's I'm interested in.
Thanks Mark. There’s always the possibility that I will compile another video covering any topics or questions raised in the comments. Thanks for watching .
I watch entire video. I have interest in APRS feature.
I have a Open Spot 4, like it, Works well with My Alinco DJ-MD5X DMR HT,
The 4 and 4 pro are currently on sale…so…here you are costing me money again. I went with the Pro 4. Upgrading from an OG OpenSpot.
I am very tempted, but it is such a pity you cannot buy them in the UK. Importing is quite a hassle now and any warranty issues might be tricky.
Becoming a common problem now. Have tried to buy radio products from a dufch and a German company and both declined the business.
Awesome . I need to purchase one
Thanks!
Cheers! thanks very much! :-)
I would be interested to know if it can be opened.??
or is glued shut..??
I have the OS3 and it's just 2 clamshells clipped together. I'm not about to open mine as it's fairly new, but it sure looks like they can be separated.
I think I do like the (digital) cross-mode feature... but I'm not sure I know enough about that feature and (generic) digital mobile radio modes in general to be confident I should care in my situation.
Last year our local Amateur club bought Yaesu Fusion repeater hardware (steep promo discounts for clubs offered at the time). I voted for that acquisition, but with the lurking worry that Fusion is Yaesu proprietary and I wasn't likely to buy into Yaesu equipment anytime soon, myself.
So I assume that this cross-repeater capability would allow me to use a less expensive - say, a Baofeng - HT through this openSPOT and be able to talk to my buds on our local Fusion repeater (assuming we have Wires-X and Internet connectivity at the Fusion repeater) ?
Edit: Ha, checked the openSPOT prices and decided my question above is academic but not important for me. I might as well buy a nice Yaesu HT or mobile radio instead ;)
I bought the cheapest/simplest Fusion handheld FT-70D works perfectly.
If I ever wanted more power, small Amplifier that is suitable for Digital...
No, it doesn't support analog FM
When people talk about "cross mode" digital capabilities they are talking about moving between digital protocols. For instance, you have a Yaseu HT (so, C4FM branded as "fusion") and you want to talk with a group of DMR users in a DMR "talk group". Of you have a DMR radio and you want to join a D-Star "reflector". The hotspots can do this because the voice is already digitized. It's just protocol translation which general purpose computers are good at. They can not do plain old analog FM to digital "cross mode" because they don't have analog to digital converters, so no way to capture just the voice signal from the RF stream.
OpenSpots are nice, work well, and are user friendly - but in the end don't do anything you need that a Raspberry PI with an MMDVM modem running PI-Star software won't do for a whole lot less money (and that even factors in how inflated the prices of the PIs are at the moment).
MMDVM does NOT do DSTAR transcoding, so that’s one of the features which is unique with OpenSpot.
@@TechMindsOfficial If at least with Pi-Star it was possible to only add an AMBE key on the raspberry to transcode to D-Star that would already be good.
Great video
Great look at OS4
"The battery of course, is not removeable". I have no idea why, this is a killer feature for me these days.
I'm pretty solid on "why". It's the darned e-waste issue first - expected to either throw valuable Lithium chemistry in the landfill or find some recycling facility that may just do the same thing.
Or second, but related, I could circumvent the e-waste issue by just replacing the battery myself... if allowed.
/often do things that aren't "allowed" anyway
@@Randrew I'm not about to drop a substantial amount of cash on something that is inevitably destined for land-fill purely because the battery dies. Then there's the morality/environmental stuff. It's just wrong, smaller companies like Shark RF are surely able to buck the trend. They can still invite new sales by innovating with new features.
Considering it can be charged or powered from a 5V USB Source I think it’s extremely versatile. I guess it’s too early to say how many battery cycles it can handle, but who cares! If it’s that much of an issue in a few years time then just replace the battery inside, I’m sure there will be something available IF the need arises.
@@TechMindsOfficial I thought the battery was not replaceable, if it is that changes everything. I got the impression it was sealed or something. If typical users can replace it, good job Shark RF.
@@dodgydd You're a ham, just open the case and solder in a new battery when/if it dies...
Hi Im setting up the openspot 4 to my home wifi and my phones hotspot . Ive set my homes wifi to SSID #1 and my mobile to SSID #2 but in my current configuration it shows DNS SERVER #1 with the ip address but the DNS SERVER #2 says not set is this normal
Nice vid
Good video, drinking from the fire hose for this 71 YO newbie, Hi Hi. Thanks for the demo es 73 de KT1R Lou in West Virginia
They look great, just way too expensive for me. I'll be sticking to my PiStar hotspots for the time being... (made it to the end too).
Is the OpenSpot 4 Pro shipping again?
Also if it Cashs, Connect it to Your Computer for Rebooting,
I’m thinking, I’m thinking…
The battery I think is a issue, how long does one load work if you really using the Spot ? And as I saw the price, I think I watch the market an wait, there are lots of repeaters around me.
Thanks for your great work, by the way, great audio❗️
73 HB3XBL 👍🇨🇭
The Web interface is not showing the Speaker Option,
Yes cool video i want one :-)
Ack, at 12:06 I'm reminded why I - a person immersed in code, analog signal acquisition and embedded controls systems since the mid-1980s - loath modern, narrowband, *digital* voice communication. With a pretty obviously clean RF signal, the digitized, companded, lossy-compressed and reconstituted voice is riddled with digital aliasing, especially at the higher audible frequencies where the most information has been sacrificed for bandwidth. Add in any data loss in the RF path and it becomes a nightmare to listen.
I think you have forgotten the positives to Digital signals. :-)
@@TechMindsOfficial Don't know if there's sarcasm in there or not...
Maybe this "degradation" I reference started with the POTS [x]-law compression algorithms used for long-haul trunks. But those were (originally) shifted over fairly high reliability, packet switched networks and never had to decompress to better than the POTS bandwidth which was crap from the beginning.
Even modern "wired" telephony is suffering from being transported (primarily) over IP networks these days with end-to-end QoS settings non-existent or mostly ignored. And forget digital cellular tech - variable latency there seems to battle with dropped packets in a contest to ruin voice communications.
I'm a little surprised that "two-way" voice apps for smart phones aren't more popular here in the US. My wife uses one to talk to her family back in China and it works very well: Press the "speak" button and talk. Wait and soon a very clear, relatively wideband, no noticeable aliasing or dropped data response comes back from the other party.
No not sarcasm, I’m British :) Joking aside I do agree with you with regards to digital quality. In this day and age we should be experiencing crystal clear audio comms. However, bandwidth and power has a lot to do with digital specifications. There are many positives to digital, but one that I have personally tested and experienced is that on harsh band conditions a nFM signal can be hard to hear, but digital, with its narrow bw, gets through and makes the contact. Not BBC quality, but it makes the contact. That was my point, there are positives to digital.
In the UK if you order a new Broadband Service your home phone is now provisioned over VOIP, even if your line is copper.
Makes it easier for Service/Support, only dealing with one set of Hardware.
A new shiny Modem/Router and Fancy Digital Handsets, Quality is pretty good, not sure what Codecs used
@@MINI-4X4-RADIO Quite a few years back when I last had a "land line" it was by VoIP provided by my cable TV/Internet provider.
I got the chance to quiz one of their back-room technicians at the time of provisioning and she informed me that, yes the reason the modem had a backup battery was to support our federally mandated 911 emergency call system. She also told me that they (at their discretion?) applied QoS settings that should make its legibility at least as good as analog POTS. I never noticed any problems with its audio.
Hallo zusammen, hat jemand Erfahrungen über die maximalen Entfernungen zwischen Openspot - Mobile Phone und Openspot - Funkgerät in der Wohnung oder im freien Feld? 73s!!
i see the device has cat control [4:17].. nice one
Yep! Gets everywhere that one! lol cheers!
4:17 cat
Made it 45 seconds in before I "face palmed". The "Shark"? As in "jump the shark"?... double face palm.
FB! 73!
It is also helpful NOT to have any special characters in your iPhone's name...like: Jeremy's iPhone may cause problems connecting, especially on older hotspots.
Not impressed with digital ham
$375 and no phone support. Good luck with you tube videos for free help. Here’s a question, how do you know if it’s connected to the Icom 52-a?
Ordered one today, as they are on special for Dayton. I'll let you know how it goes with my ID-52 soon. Interested how well D-Star transcodes to other modes.
@@gordonpearce Im sure it'll do great. Keep us posted!
this is not radio. the user is communicating through the internet.
The Internet has been described as "The World's Largest Repeater".....
You don’t actually state what this is? Not in the first five minutes anyhow.
No display
Doesnt need one. All controlled by your browser on pc or phone.
@@TechMindsOfficial do need one so so i can see last caller
The video implies that the openSPOT 4 only works with iOS devices. This is totally false. Since this uses a web interface, Android devices work just fine.
It does NOT imply that what so ever! I merely emphasised on iOS because of past issues with iOS and tethering internet.
Nice video... way overpriced
horrifically bad unnatural distorted robotic audio.
Nope. It’s crap. 😊
Great video….. lots of info and helped a lot. Cheers.. VA3RKO
Watched the whole video! Never know when you might learn something new. 73 de KD4CHW
Watched the whole thing. Thanks.
Thanks!
Thank you so much!