I am new to this so please be understanding. I recently ordered a uconsole for my son, alongside a 5 module, and i am now looking on the hackergadgets site to buy some extras. my son who’s 14 is a lot more skillful than me at this and is tinkering on linux for years. i want to surprise him with a full package of this console so obviously i can’t ask him. Made an account here only to ask the question.
Now, i am a bit confused on the mentioned site, and i’d not rather buy the same thing twice. I am looking to get the AIO V2 expansion pack. this:
And i want to clarify. so there’s no overlap with the one above, i’d need to choose Rasp Pi, then, with dual 21700 battery holder (i read it’s better), and then select None at the expansion board option, because i already got it in the previous link? total comes to 60 dollars. Is my thinking correct?
Not sure what you bought for version and which CM5 you get. Does your CM5 come with wifi and eMMC? This is important to know as depending on your plan to install, you might need an extra tool.
With the #1 pack you get the base components for the most goodies however no antennas nor mount.
The #2 contains the mounting for the antennas to be mounted ontop of the uConsole while pack #3 contains all seven/four antennas.
The alternative #4 will provide more features than the onboard wifi that comes with CM5.
This can come in handy for wardrivning.
There are other alternatives to the AC1200 which are even more advanced such as Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C5 however connecting them might require some extra tinkering.
Why did I write seven/four antennas?
IF you decide to get #4 alternative you will need extra antenna mounts and HackerGadgets will ship you the corresponding version of the antenna mount depending on you order.
Thing to note..
This listed pack will allow you to read communications from SDR, Lora, Wifi (x2 if your CM5 has Wifi) and Bluetooth.
If your CM5 does come with eMMC you might need to either get a separate CM5 dev board to flash your CM5. If you plan to use SDCARD or NVME you might need CM5 change some setting in your CM5 EEPROM through a dev board.
If you are planning to use NVME, Id recommend to get a NVME USB dock to flash the OS to the NVME.
Up top I plan to run the 7-antenna pack with 3 WiFi antennas, 2 Bluetooth, 1 LoRa Meshtastic, and 1 GPS. On the left side I will have 1 RF antenna for SDR for a total of 8 antennas (7 on top, 1 on the left side). These are the components I ordered (image below); no idea when they will ship… I planned to just order and forget about it. I also need to order 2 larger 21700 batteries 18650 Batteries: High Capacity Li-ion Cells since I will be changing the (2) 18650 board that comes with it out for the HackerGadgets (2) 21700 which will last longer. I purchased my uConsole from OpenSourceSDRLab (selected ship from U.S.) and got it in a week, my CM5 16GB WiFi Lite from PiShop.us and got it within 2 weeks. I have heard 6 months can be standard with other vendors. The SDRLab uConsole came with the CM4 and I swapped it out for the CM5.
I used BalenaEtcher to flash Rex’s DragonOS operating system AK-REX - Images onto the MicroSD card (did this with a MicroSD card reader plugged into my windows laptop). (My CM5 is the lite version so it takes a MicroSD card). I then watched YouTube to assemble it, and then used ChatGPT to change a lot of things using the command line Terminal (aka “Bash”).
I am currently running it without a fan and it works. You just have to remove the plastic cover off both sides of the thermal paste (I didn’t realize it had plastic on it for 2 weeks).
I also upgraded the trackball and keyboard with the Lulu Trackpad mod v2.1 from Hack2you. This was an awesome upgrade and was fairly easy to install. 2026-uConsole Trackpad keyboard kits – hack2you
I bought from the shop the uConsole Kit RPI-CM4 Lite version, with wifi only and no command module, because i read the new one is better. total was 129 dollars.
i went and also bought from somewhere else the CM 5 version, with 8gb and wifi, the Lite version, with no emmc memory (i hope i got this right). it was 180 euros from raspberrypie.dk.
That sounds right! Once I complete mine I am going to post a walkthrough of everything I did step-by-step which will hopefully make it easier for some. It has taken me a bit to figure it all out.
