Digital Comms Portable Bag

I have created a highly portable digital comms bag.

The bag is the 5.11 Tactical Two-Banger. The netted pouches in the front pocket hold a UPS and RPi. Unzipping the front pocket allows for ventilation.

The middle pocket holds cables, 12 v charger, backup batteries, and a cell phone to access the RPi through a wifi hotspot and VNC connection, per the instructions on www.thetechprepper.com

Elastic bands in the rear AR mag pouches hold a portable radio, a small USB speaker, and the Digirig. The radio is powered by a battery eliminator, that I modified by clipping off the 12 v cigarette lighter plug and replacing it with a 5.5 x 2.5mm plug. For my portable, this must be plugged into a 9 v outlet on the UPS since the removed 12 v plug held circuitry that stepped the voltage down from 12 to 9 v.

Cables are routed through the molle loops on the outside. A crafty person might cut and sew a better pathway for cables from the front to back.

This setup is vulnerable to static buildup (at least I assume it’s static electricity), which crashes the system. I have mitigated this by sticking ferrites on everything, and modifying my behavior. For example: carrying it while it rubs against my clothing with the computer running builds up static and crashes the system after about a 1 mile walk. Additionally, sliding it against the back of a felted recliner to hang it on the backrest of the chair created enough static to repeatably kill the system. The behavior modification was to carry it with the computer off to where I wish to be, then turning the computer on and leaving it alone there until I’m done with it. It will stay running for days in that way.

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