I'm not the OP, but my OS3 is the least reliable, worst sound quality hotspot I have ever used. The only reason I bought it was that it does YSF-DStar cross mode using an FT5DR I also hate. With no new ham equipment to choose from anyone, I feel like I'm stuck. OS3 CONSTANTLY clips transmissions, doesn't transmit at all, no matter what Internet source I connect it to. Completely unreliable. I've owned it for a year and a half and struggled with it every day. been on the OS forums, gone through every setting to no avail. It's an expensive piece of trash, and I'm not afraid to say it, no matter who has no problems. I am quite literally ready to punt and go back to a D74 that are now a grand used, and a Pi-Star- a combo that worked flawlessly for years. But really, ham equipment is stuck in time, and I'm done spending any money until manufacturers get it together and offer good products again.
Sorry to hear that. Mine is working fine. I did shut off automatic updates once all the features I needed were updated to keep any future bugs out. My OpenSpot 2 was the worst for me. I feel the ZumSpot board for Pi in my next best , I have one on a Pi3b+ and it works fine but does not allow adjusting of DMR-Fusion audio as my OpenSpot 3 does and the reason I bought the OP3. Two AMBE chips in the OP3 allow me to equalize the difference in audio between DRM an Fusion as it is a true cross mode bridge and not just a software header re-write to get DMR-C4FM to work. It is also the reason you can bridge to D-Star, and I get good audio reports on it. FYI my OP2 was the one I had that would not connect to internet reliable. Shark told me to put it right next to my WiFi; still did not work. OP3 has been good to me on that. However I have noted with any hotspot; if you have stuff in your house doing HD or 4K streaming video, go into your router and give the Hot spot Priority of all other traffic. Otherwise your router prioritizes video by default. One time I had my OP3 causing my signal to break up to my friend on the road with his OpenSpot on his Iphone. I rebooted my router and the problem went away. I have had that with Streaming video on my smart TV and a router reboot got the video from buffering to fine.
I just bought an OpenSpot 4 Pro for two reasons. The first being that SharkRF currently has their spooky days sale going on and the price is $265 USD for the pro version, and two, I often travel long distances without hitting any repeaters and the ham population is very sparse, but I still have enough cell coverage to connect it to my iPhone or iPad hot-spot to connect to local C4FM repeaters back home. I will have it by Wednesday of this week and I’ll put it to work in my car and see how it goes. I don’t need it to be perfect, or have perfect sound. I just need it to make the connection when my radio can’t do it by itself.
I have the Openspot 3 and I have to say compared to a pistar it's a very impressive product. Good points 1 Battery life is decent, once I get 5+ hrs I'm happy. 2 Very compact 3 OS built into firmware, powers on and off in seconds and you don't have to worry about shutting it down to prevent sd card corruption. 4 is what really sets the OS3/4 apart from the rest, I can use my anytone 878 and crossmode between DMR, D-Star and fusion all from the radio not needing a phone by using the special commands the OS3 needs, so I got DMR, D-Star and Fusion from the 1 radio and I switch easily between the different modes and channels using only the radio. This is an amazing feature but it's really complicated to set up but once you master it it's not so bad, you really do have to read the manual.
This is KK7IAA Mary from Cheyenne Wy, My husband (KK7GXU) and I got a huge kick out of my audio in the first minute of that. We will definitely look into open spot.
The OpenSpot 4 and 4 Pro are on sale on the SharkRF website. They are calling it their “black” sale, presumably for “Black Friday”. Just a PSA.
