First impressions with the T1000e weren’t great, TBH, but I finally got it going and think I’m going to like it compared to my old Heltec V3.

Initial Setup

The erase and flashing procedure on these is a lot more involved than with its ESP32-based cousins. Technically speaking, it’s easier since you basically just drag/drop a firmware file like you’re copying it to a flash drive, but there’s also a lot more clicking around, mode switching, and a separate erase procedure. Not a complaint, just different and annoying. On the plus side, this model is able to update the firmware over Bluetooth in the app so that’s a plus going forward.

For whatever reason, it just would not load my imported channel config either from my provisioning script or from restoring a backup. The imported config also seemed to keep disabling Bluetooth on it which was frustrating. Finally just did it manually in the app, and it finally worked after a couple of factory resets.

I had to play around with it a bit to get the GPS and light/temperature sensors working, but those are reporting nicely now.

Hands-On

Bought a couple of extra charging adapters since they don’t use USB-C and decided to 3D print a little cradle to drop it into.

I’m definitely going to miss being able to send canned messages from the device itself. My old EDC node didn’t have a rotary encoder, but the 2.7 firmware added the ability to use the single button to send them which was awesome since I never liked carrying my larger nodes that had the rotary encoders.

Other than that, I think this is my new favorite thing.

Battery Life

Cannot yet say, but probably a lot better than my Heltec. This one has a 700 mAh battery and most of the reviews I’ve read say it gets a day or two per charge. That beats the ~18 hours my Heltecs get on a 2,000 mAh battery.

Bonus

I also like that it has not one but two pop culture references built in:

First, it looks a lot like the locator card that saved M’s ass in “The World is Not Enough”. And it has GPS, so it kind of is an IRL version of that prop.

Locator Card Movie Prop

Also, the notification tone is the Cisco ringtone better known as the “CTU Ringtone”.

    • Iced Raktajino@startrek.websiteOP
      1·
      3 days ago

      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).