I’ve been using my ZumSpot on my home WiFi network for a few months. I’ve heard several folks use their’s with their cell phone internet connection (Hotspot), and started to mess with that a couple of weeks ago. It didn’t work the first time, it connected to my iPhone WiFi, but didn’t seem to be working.
Today I did a firmware upgrade and update cycle before trying it again, and it seemed to work perfectly.
To add your phone Hotspot to your ZumSpot, go to your pi-star address on your browser and select the “Configuration” tab. Scroll down the page until you find the “Wireless Configuration” section and select the “Configure WiFi” button. Turn your cell phone Hotspot on, and wait for its SSID to show up, then select it and enter the Hotspot password. Once this is done your ZumSpot should be configured to connect to whichever network it finds (home WiFi or phone Hotspot).
Greetings:
I am trying to get my Zumspot to work with my Iphone 8.
Under the WiFi setup menu I set up the SSID and password for my local hone WiFi and it works fine. I added a second WiFi which is my Iphone SSID and password but I cannot seem to get my iphone to connect to the Zumapot. The “blue bar” on the iphone never comes on indicating a connection to the Zumspot. I just loaded the lates version of software to the Zumspot, but I cannot seem to get the Iphone to connect to the Zumspot.The notes you listed for mobile setup does not seem to work.Can you make any suggestions for setup. I cannot find anyone who will give me more info on mobile setup – a step by step setup help, so I can try n figure out what is wrong with my setup.
Hey Tom,
I’m sorry you haven’t been able to get your iPhone hotspot to work with the ZumSpot. As you know, I’ve had no issue with that working, nor have several friends in the area that have done the same thing. Of course the most likely thing would be for the SSID or Password to be improperly entered in the ZumSpot Pi-Star/Configuration/Wireless Configuration settings, then adding a new configuration. But if you are attempting to do that near your home WiFi, it will always grab your home connection first and never get to the iPhone Hotspot. Either turn off your WiFi router at home, or drive away and configure it that way. By the way, if you are away from home, then the Pi-Star will eventually figure out there is no network, so it will put up a WiFi connection of its own. You can use that to enter you iPhone credentials, then simply allow the pi-star to reboot and you should connect to your phone. Disconnect from your phone, go back home, and it should connect to your home WiFi.
Good luck, 73, Bob, WB4SON
Just saw this, so I thought I’d jump in. I had trouble connecting to my iphone SE until I changed the SSID. Apparently, the Zumspot does not like spaces or special characters in the SSID. I just changed it to my call sign and had a lot better luck!
Hi Eric
Thanks for the tip. Another thing to keep in mind is a huge number of iPhones identify themselves as “iPhone” as the SSID. Makes it hard to setup in crowded place (not that there are many crowds these days). I changed my default iPhone SSID for that reason.
Hi Bob,
Just read your Mobile ZumSpot post. I have the new ZumSpot Pi Hat with the 1.3 inch OLED display installed on my Raspberry Pi B+. It looks like you are powering you ZumSpot from what seems to be some kind of a power bank. My ZumSpot/Raspberry Pi combination needs a 5 volt 3 amp power source. Are there any power banks I can use to take my ZumSpot with me? Appreciate any info.
Thanks,
Sebastian (K2PDR)
My zumspot connects to my iphonex wifi pi-star, connects. I receive echo and oled on zumspot shows cqcqcq. But I can connect to a reflector. When I quickly switch over to my digital repeater it connects just fine.
Really want to use the zumspot mobile with my 51a plus2.
What step am I missing?