E1406: Meshtastic Spec5 Trekker Case for Lilygo T-beam

the Lilygo t Being. It's by a company in Texas called Spec five. I heard about it through the Digital Rancher and today I'm gonna put together a brand new tea being with the mesh tastic software that I've already flashed. We're gonna put it in this case. I'm gonna show you what it looks like. Okay, this is the actual case here it comes with. I actually bought two of them. I forgot about two of them, but I did. This is the tea beam with the screen on it right here.

This is the Spec five case. I should say this is Spec five case here Again. Huge shout out to Digital Rancher Rob over there. He has a video that I will link below. You can check that out. He brought this to I don't remember where he brought it now. I saw it somewhere. He talked about it at Dayton, but I don't think he had it yet. Anyway, I got it. I got the idea of it from him. So this is a very well made case, and I'll put the link to it in the description below as well.

And it comes with the hardware that you need right here. These green pieces right here are the buttons for it, and then these screws are they go around in all the four corners here, and it comes with its own little carabiner. This is all the stuff it comes with right here. So let's put this together real quick and we'll see what happens. This is a second T Beam device that I had. I have a T Beam device in my truck. I'm gonna be doing a video about

that soon. You want to make sure one thing real quick. For those of you who are not into radio very much. Okay, if you're into the mesh tastic, then great. If you're not a ham you don't have your MRS license whatnot. Okay, you can damage the transmitting board on this the transmitter on this board. If you plug in your battery, and this powers on and starts transmitting without this intenna connected.

So you want to make sure you have an intenna connect, an intenna of some sort connected when you power the device up. Okay, if this is not connected, if there's no intenna, it's possible you can damage this whole thing. So just be aware of that. Okay. So that's what I was looking. I was looking at how I'm going to put this together, and I think I'm gonna do it like this kind of sit there like that. This case here has a little lip around it right here

where you can maybe see it. And once you get it all put together, it won't be a big deal. You just got to make sure everything lines up before you start bolting things down. I should put the screws in first. Oh, I'm gonna have to snip those off a bit. Okay. What I had to do is these little sawder joints, these these sawder pins were sticking up a little higher than the case would allow. I just snipped them off. No big deal. The swder is still good. I tested it to make sure it still powers up.

We're all good there. So and then I did a little bit of experimenting with putting it here and there. So this part this is the centerpiece between the bottom. The bottom piece here has this little insert that's where your battery compartment goes. Obviously really cool thing about this has a nice metal belt clip right there, and then it has a kickstand where you can sit it down like that in order to and if the kickstand. It has a little magnet here that's there in the kickstand

and there, so it kind of holds it close. Because I do notice it. It's kind of kind of tends to pop up if you don't push it shut all the way, But if you push it shut all the way, that magnet catches and that keeps it in place. So that's neat there too. We've got four mount screws on the outside and then on the inside of this. The four mount screws on the outside go here. They go through this board here into this board here from the

top right here through this middle insert through here. But then inside of here there are four more in mount screws inside of here. So if you look right here, we've got the larger screws with the nuts on the back of them. These are made for the four outside corners. And then you've got these little self tapping screws right here and those go down in the middle. So if you put your board in here correctly like this, there we go. You have to put the little pins in

the side pins in here first. These things are kind of small. So what I do, or what I'm going to do, going to put this like this there and there. It kind of looks like I'm putting them in backwards, and perhaps i am. But if you put them on the outside, they're gonna just fall out of the outside because there's no cover that goes around this. So these little push buttons here will be on the outside and they're pretty easy to press. Just get them lined up correctly.

We put this in here like that, and then those line up correctly on that and we will take and mount this part. Oops. Now see I lost one of the okay, so we're gonna have to do it from the side. That's fine. Rob did tell me it was a little bit tricky to get this thing put together, but once you get it, it's it's a really nice case. I'm gonna put it like that, and I'm gonna take these little screws. Okay, there's pre drilled holes in the bottom of this black insert piece. You just gotta line

it up. It's a little bit dark in here, and I'm doing it sideways so that the side buttons don't fall out. But I got the first one in, so I should probably use a smaller screwdriver. But this is what i've got and it does fit the head of the screw, so I'm okay, I'm good. Now it should hold those in pretty well because it's already started in the two corners there. Turn that that way. I don't want the board to flop around too much because it will fall out of here and it will lose those

green buttons in there. It is, so I've got one. See that. There's silver screws one, two, and three. Put the fourth one in here, all right. Now that I've got them all started in there, I'll go ahead and tighten them down. Don't want to tighten them too tight. You don't want to strip out. It is just pla plastic or whatever, you know. Whatever filment he used to print these is three D printed material. It's not heavy duty,

so just beware that. Just put them down all the way until you feel some resistance, until they're completely sunk into the and flush with the board and then stop just like that. Okay, so I've got our three green buttons here, all three of those punched nicely. The T beam has a micro USB control on it in case you guys haven't seen one of these before. It's a micro USB charger. This will charge the internal eighteen six

fifty battery and you can run it from this. If you don't want to put a battery in here at all, then great, don't do that. Of course, I'm gonna put a battery in mind, so I can keep this around in my pocket. And then this is called an SMA connector. This is an SMA female because the very center is well I'm not gonna explain that to you guys. Y'all can figure that out. The center of the SMA male is a pin and the center of the female is not a pin. So call it what you want to,

I guess, and we're gonna put this here. I want to put the intenna on because, like I said, I don't want to power it up. I don't want to put the battery in it and power it up without the intenna on. It. First appeel to cover up the screen. Now this goes just this just sits over the top. It's fine right there. This stick still sticks up a little because of the pins right there. If if you were to adjust the screen and maybe set it up higher on the pins, that might work a little bit better.

For what I'm doing, I think this will be fine. It's not supposed to be waterproof or anything anyway, so the pins do stick up a little bit, but I don't think that I care about that. And then before we put this whole case together, I've got to put the battery in. That's why I put the intenna on right now. So let's do that real quick. I'd mentioned in one in another video, I've got this ninety nine hundred milliamp hour eighteen sixty fifty batteries. A lie, this

thing is not ninety nine hundred million hours. And my experience has been that those little three thousand million hour pillow batteries actually lasts longer than this, partially due to the fact that these things are not rated properly. This is probably a two to three thousand million power battery in reality, or perhaps due to the fact that this uh the T beam has GPS, so you're running GPS

at the same time. That you're running Laura Meshtastic, which unlike the unlike the Hell Tech doesn't have GPS, so with the battery is gonna last longer since it's not running GPS. We've got a screen there. All good, okay, antenna is on, no problem. I've just noticed that he gives you an extra self tapping screw there. I got one in all four corners. Okay, so now I'm gonna put this here. It's starting by hand at first. Make sure they go through all three you divite all three

pieces here. Got a little wrench here with the proper fitting on the front of it. Again, you don't have to monster wrench these things down, so just make sure they get nice and snug and stop stop cranking on them because you don't want to crack or break anything. Now we've got all four screws in all four corners. There. The buttons are working. This is and I like the fact that it's got indicators on the case for what the buttons do. That's IO thirty eight. I think that

just means you scroll through there. There we go just like that. This is reset, so that basically reboots it and then you can power it off with this one that's pretty good right there. And again you can set it like that with a little kickstand that's on the back of it. Just like that. You can set it down like that, or you can I guess you can set it like that put the antenna up. By the way. For those of you who aren't really familiar with radio, you're gonna get better results with a with a nine

hundred megahertz Laura meshtastics. You're gonna get better results when the antenna is pointed up. That's why this antenna bends. This is the antenna that came with the t being. It bends like that. So you can set it down like that and still have the antenna pointing up. You can set it down like this and still have the antenna pointing up. And then when you're if you're carrying it on a belt clip like that, you can twist

this and set it like that. So if you're setting it down on the desk or on a flat area surface like that, it's best to have the antenna pointed up like that. You'll get better results in longer range and better polarization with that. So that's just something that you learn in radio class. But there it is right there at Spec five. This thing is really cool. This is the best looking case and the best and the

most functional case. The best options case for the T being the Lilygo T being that I have seen yet. If you guys have something that you like just as well, or something that you might like better, put a comment below. I'd love to know what it is. I'm gonna hook this up and this is gonna be my daily carry. I've been using that Celtech V three that we all

built together at Daytonhamvenchon. I've got one of those Josh three D printed a case for me and I've been carrying that around that one around town just to kind of see what I pick up around town, which has been hardly anything at all. I do have Meshtastic running one hundred percent of the time in my truck, and

I'm gonna do another video about that soon. But I'm gonna trade out my everyday one that I carry in my pocket for this one because I like this belt clip that's on it, I like the adjustable antenna, and it's just a really neat looking case. So check out the description in the link below for both the lily Go T bean and for this Spec five case seventy three to all