35,000mAh uConsole: The Everything Build + STL

[qpens8_qpens8]

I packed a uConsole with a 35,000mAh battery and crammed in as much hardware as the chassis would physically hold. It’s all running Parrot OS and basically serves as a complete, handheld RF/pentesting lab.

Fifteen antennas, two Wi-Fi cards, a sub-GHz radio, and an SDR in a handheld that lasts a full workday and then some. Photos will do most of the work here, but here is the full breakdown of what it took to get this running.

The Hardware Inside

• Battery/Power: Custom 35,000mAh pack made from 10x spot-welded 18650 LG cells, running through a 20A discharge BMS. I added an aluminum capacitor to smooth out the power delivery, tying into a HackerGadgets battery board.

• The Brains / Expansion: uConsole AIO V2, which packs an insane amount of built-in hardware: RTL-SDR, LoRa, GPS, RTC, a built-in USB Hub, USB 3.0, and an RJ45 Ethernet port.

• Networking: 2× AC1200 Wi-Fi adapters (alongside the AIO’s Ethernet).

• Extra RF/SDR: YARD Stick One.

• USB Management: Small additional internal USB hub to route all the extra peripherals.

• The Porcupine Array: 15 antennas in total, 14 connected (Comet BNC-W100RX for SDR and Diamond RH789 for YARD Stick One)

Motherboard & Power Mods

Running this much hardware off a uConsole requires a lot of juice and bus stability. Aside from the custom battery pack, I had to make a few board-level modifications:

1. USB Power Mod: Changed a resistor to bigger one R/6.8 k on the AIO V2 so the USB bus actually gets the full 2A it needs to run all the peripherals.

2. USB Stability Mod: Swapped out C513 with a 220uF tantalum capacitor on the motherboard for a larger one to keep the USB connection stable under heavy load.

3. Hard Shutoff Mod: Modded the motherboard so that holding the power button longer switches the console fully off.

Battery Life

Despite the heavy hardware load, that massive 10-cell LG pack delivers:

• 17 hours with everything idle.

• 10 hours of continuous SDR running

Software Installed — Full List

It’s running Parrot OS with a massive suite of tools to take advantage of the hardware.

SDR / Radio Reception & Decoding:

• GQRX, CubicSDR, SDR++ (Brown), OpenWebRX (Docker)

• GNU Radio (packaged) + GNU Radio 3.10.12.0 & VOLK (both built from source)

• gr-osmosdr, SoapySDR + device modules (HackRF, RTL-SDR, BladeRF, LimeSDR, Airspy, etc.)

• CSDR, inspectrum, multimon-ng, URH (Universal Radio Hacker)

• Ham/Digital: WSJT-X, fldigi, flmsg, flamp, QSSTV, DSD-FME, m17-cxx-demod, Dire Wolf, op25 (gr-op25 + gr-op25_repeater), osmo-tetra, telive

• Aviation/Sat: gr-satellites, SatDump, Gpredict, JAERO (with JFFT, libcorrect, libacars, qmqtt, mbelib, libaeroambe), acarsdec, readsb, tar1090

• Other Tools: welle.io, Xastir, SDRTrunk, kalibrate-hackrf, rx_tools, QSpectrumAnalyzer, gr-lora_sdr, gr-tempest, gps-sdr-sim, UHD, RfCat

• (In progress/attempted: falcon, srsRAN Project, OpenAirInterface)

Bluetooth / Wireless:

• Ubertooth, Blueman, mdk3

Networking / Communication:

• Wireshark, Scapy, Signal Desktop, iNTERCEPT (smittix/intercept)

Penetration Testing / Security:

• GEF, XSStrike, SSTImap, Atomic-Operator, Fluxion, AdaptixC2, WPProbe, MetasploitMCP

System Utilities & Browsers:

• partclone, raspi-config, pinctrl, Chromium

STL files: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TKFaZTDABOls-2Vjvvl8-2hlUcKSup7i/view?usp=sharing

[Ransome]

That’s a crazy build! How long did it take you to build it? Also, do you have files for that case?

[qpens8_qpens8]

The build took me a couple of months, mainly because of battery voltage sag that kept shutting down the whole console. Standard LiPo pouch cells just can’t handle the current draw on this thing, which is why I ended up welding the batteries together and keeping the power wires to the battery board as short as possible.

I plan to release the project files as soon as I get them organised

[Cary_Lai]

That’s an amazing work! Why/How did you plan your project in the beginning?

[qpens8_qpens8]

Why I did it: I need a radio for work.

How I planned it: I didn’t. I just push the whole thing to the limit.

[WhyDev]

Amazing build but it doesnt really look handheld anymore. Looks like I see an empty space near the bottom maybe you could put some ergonomics into that area. Great work.

[WhyDev]

Wow hearted that a few seconds after I sent it.

[qpens8_qpens8]

The battery fill all the space. The whole thing is packed adding shape to it will make it even bigger.

[WhyDev]

Hmm ok I suppose you plan to use it as a radio controller so being handheld is less of a concern. Well I hope your design hasnt gone to waste and it serves you well.

[ReactiveTrigger]

Duuuuuuuuuude, Insane!

[abhishek_pillai]

Whoa that’s an insane build man. Keep up the good work.