I (finally) received my Kyocera KR1 (made by D-link) today after waiting for it for about two months.
It was worth the wait.
This thing is awesome. Its completely plug and play. You slide in your EVDO card, then you fire it up (AC or DC with the included car adapter) and you’re on your merry way surfing the net over cellular. If you don’t have an EVDO PC Card, you can also use an EVDO enabled cell phone and a USB cable to tether to the router instead. Either way, this thing is sweet.
CNET has a video review of the unit here.
The unit’s hardware is pretty complete. It has a Wifi AP, a 4-port 10/100 switch, a PCMCIA slot, a USB port, and a RS-232 serial port.
The router runs Linux as its base OS, so I’m sure it won’t take long for the OpenWRT team to port their feature-rich software to the KR1. Meanwhile there’s a group of folks modifying the base firmware with mods to include telnet, busybox, gpsd, and other useful goodies.
For about $200 (afer rebate) its the obvious choice for a mobile router when you compare it to something like a Stompbox which would easily run you three times that amount to build yourself.
Woah. Sweet indeed.
I wonder how long before these become available options in higher-end cars?