WiFi again. Faulty cheap ebay buy. Kills sims

[trevbouy]

I bought one of the very many battery powered MiFi sim router devices from ebay costing around £25. I intend to use it to monitor a cctv camera from time to time and using a home built wifi bridge get AIS on my ipad.
Unfortunately although it worked and was easy to setup, it only lasted for one page of html before 'no internet' message. I checked everything and finally removed the sim and placed it back in the spare phone it came from. No luck, message was 'no sim' it was dead.
Fortunately my provider has a deal with Currys and I was able to obtain a replacement. Tested it in phone all was well. Placed it in router and again just load one page before red light. Being a glutton for punishment I obtained another to test. You guessed it, that one was killed too.
Has anyone on here got or tried one of these from ebay? I got my money back for the item fortunately.

 

[chris-s]

Rather than waste another £25 on something unbranded, pick something from tp-link, huawei or netgear as examples.

 

[Scubadoo]

All I can say, try the tplink m7350 mifi which is reliable and just works doing what you are trying to do.

 

[wonkywinch]

I've been using a Huawei E5576 bought from Amazon for less than your 2x £25 for over 3 years without any issues.

Currently got a Lebara (Vodaphone piggy back) sim with 12gb data for less than £4 a month. Free roaming in Europe too (handy for those Greek charters).

I've set up the SSID and password the same as my home network so the switch from home to boat is seamless for my devices.

 

[trevbouy]

The device I bought was identical looking bar the huawei brand. Thanks guys I've ordered the E5576 branded Huawei device and see how we go.

 

[trevbouy]

On the boat the radio system is a Navicomm VHF set with AIS display. This is fed NMEA position data from an ancient gps plotter. One of the things I intend to do is build a wifi bridge using an ESP8266-01 wfi module and a Arduino GPS module. The wifi module is fed NMEA data and will send it to the wifi network created by the mifi kit. That way I can see AIS info on my ipad running Navionics.
Bridge details here

 

[trevbouy]

Well the MiFi Huawei router arrived. Scarce info on the paper quick start guide but it worked after entering details.
Just one question for you guys who have one. Do the indicator leds go out in use, maybe to save battery ? If I briefly touch the power button they come on for 30 seconds or so to indicate status but then go out again. The router works just fine with the leds unlit.

 

[Caladh]

Yes the screen does go blank quickly to save power

 

[trevbouy]

Ah ok thanks. Works ok and is stable.