A veritable steal at only $629.99, truly emphasizing the philosophy of the Raspberry Pi project. I'd seriously consider this in favour of my next real estate purchase
I recently found this project and I'm very excited about this DIY portable Linux computer trend and hope some of them graduate to mainstream. N-O-D-E recently announced one [1] and there is another RPi zero based phone project on Crowd Supply[2].
The reason I want a portable Linux handheld computer is, because the direction in which smartphones are moving towards is frightening to say the least. Smartphones are essentially mobile computers and for many parts of the world the first computing experience. COVID-19 situation has shown how mobile computing has been taken for granted and misery of those who have no access to it[3].
Can we imagine a computer manufacturer selling $2000 computer which will receive security updates for only 3 years if lucky, can't install alternate operating systems or software of our choice? Then why are we providing smartphone manufacturers with such privileges? With that unfair advantage they are dictating mobile computing for the entire world. I'm afraid it's just a matter of time, when this trend scale up and affects overall computing in general.
I get flashbacks to the college intern I interviewed that excitedly told me about the RPi telemetry design he created for a rocket. Got it all coded up and working great.
After some prodding he confessed that it failed on launch. The micro SD connector couldn’t take the vibration.
Yep, the connectors on those things can have intermittent contact. If you're uploading data to the SD card live while in flight, those intermittent connections can screw up your data. The workaround is to use a flash chip to write live data to it and then once the rocket lands, dump all of it to the SD card.
That's odd - I've flown RPis on drones with far more vibration than the relatively smooth linear acceleration of a model rocket. In such setups it's recommended to directly solder power and USB connections, but I've never heard anything about the microSD connector. Did he say how he diagnosed the failure?
I started to build a "compact" handheld RasPi 3B+, but the driver situation for all the shield-like display assemblies I could find (including the promising-looking one I gambled on buying) was very poor. The best I could find was "download our special build of Raspbian", which is a showstopper for my priorities.
If there shield-like RasPi touchscreen open source drivers, mainlined in Linux, and also included in Raspbian and Debian, I'd like to hear of it.
(Blob-free would also be nice, though the RasPi itself has blob problems, so isn't as good as it could be for open source.)
> full-size keyboard, without the touch and without the GUI. Just a term. Think tandy model 100.
Yes! With a nice mechanical keyboard. I found a nice display for something like this a while ago; these 1280x400 pixel, 191 mm wide (visible area) IPS displays originally meant for automotive use:
I don't think getting a reflective LCD display in this form factor is realistic these days, they stopped manufacturing those in the 80s. I bought this OLED 256x64 display to play with- it's got enough pixels to make it work, but it's just too small/high density to work well form-factor-wise with a full width tenkeyless keyboard.
Filament is really cheap. Basic pla is roughly 2-3c a gram. I couldn't see this being more than 500 grams, so maybe $10-20 for filament, maybe $30 if you use abs or something.
I'm guessing the rest of the price is paying to have it printed by a third party.
I've been looking into something like this, and it seems the display is the hardest part. I haven't been able to find a large monochrome LCD that is compatible. Now if you don't care if the screen uses a lot of power, is color, etc. then there are a lot of options similar to what you're describing on reddit.com/r/cyberDeck
The cost is very high for just the materials, even rounded up to the nearest reel. On the other hand, you'd be lucky to buy an ABS-capable printer for under $340, considering they generally require a thermal shroud to print reliably.
I added an rpi0 to my Olivetti M10 (a Model 100 clone) and it is wonderful! So much data, a great keyboard, and a reason to sit and read and stop bothering about pixels .. ;)
That kind of thing had been my dream device as well, but once I get realistic it gets more and more akin to a random phone with PmOS with keyboard but only as a want item, except PmOS only runs on select(scarce) devices. I think the core of the problem is clunkiness of Android.
e: I checked supported devices list for PmOS “just to be sure” — I was genuinely pleasantly surprised
Yes, that's the downfall on all of these sort of things. Nobody seems to make a good mini keyboard these days. Back in the late 1980s there was the Poqet PC and it had a very nice typable keyboard. I don't know why we can't have something similar in terms of small keyboards, but as far as I can tell, nobody makes a keyboard like that now.
Inspired by things like these, I bought a 5" LED display for my RPI. The idea was to display the time / weather on Chromium in a "kiosk mode". I was however surprised that with the latest install of Raspbian OS it was even hard to open a simple webpage on Chromium. It was just too slow. I would really avoid buying / building anything on a RPI from now.
That's Chromium on ARM under pure Linux, not necessarily an isolated RPi issue. I've found both Chromium and Firefox to be unusable on even Jetson with Nvidia graphics but a similar specced fan-less x86-64 Chromebook handles browsing with ease as Google has done a fantastic job in optimising ChromeOS. So browsing experience on ARM SBCs have left more to be desired largely due to lack of memory.
Can anyone share their browsing experience on 8GB RPi?
Fwiw, 2 years ago I tried to develop an app at work on Windows IOT on a Raspberry Pi 3. I abandoned pretty quickly, the thing was having a hard time just scrolling some text.
At the time I thought Windows IOT was not optimized, but maybe it's just the whole x86 ecosystem that hasn't been adapted to ARM computing.
I think you can install Android on a Pi, it would be interesting to see if Chrome is fast enough there.
I love the idea of this, but some time definitely needs to be invested in reducing costs. $340 for a plastic housing and some screws? That's ludicrous.
I bet you could CNC some injection molds the cost of 2-3 of these chassis. If someone could do that and sell the housing for ~$30 each, this would be an impressive piece of kit.
You are significantly underestimating the cost of producing molds. You could easily hit $100k for molds made in the USA, $10-20k made in China. That’s also assuming you get the molds right the first time and don’t have to go back and make new ones. Plus there is the setup and minimum production runs, you need a fairly large demand to make producing these viable. 2-3 of these ($680-$1020) doesn’t cover cost just to modify the design to work for injection molding.
$340 is more than the cost of the rest of the BOM, and it feels kind of crazy that the plastic housing would cost more than the electronics.
I get that the parts are 3D printed, but are they being printed on-demand or something? I wonder if the 3D printing files have been open sourced - would be interesting to hear from a 3D printing enthusiast here about the costs (it's HN, there's bound to be many!).
It looks like a solid shell for RPi, it's just a shame that the price is a bit on the high side though.
For an alternative hackable laptop like shell for RPi, consider the CrowPi2 [1]. It does not support touchscreen but the screen estate is much bigger (11.6") and can be configured with many sensors for testing and developing IoT based projects. As an added bonus the price is quite affordable for students and hobbyists. The review of CrowPi2 can be found here [2].
Regardless of what it costs to make at this price or really any I don't see the appeal. I used to get excited about similar projects but with how good my 2 pine phones are already and the pinetab that is getting delivered Thursday I already have functional sleek linux handheld devices with additional inputs/outputs.
I guess I don’t see the appeal either, mostly because an 800x480 display seems painful.
Getting either a Pine phone or Pine tablet sounds better. Do the Pine phones make sense just as Linux devices, not using them as a phone?
I always travel with a small iPad Pro, and with Mosh, tmux, and a really powerful VPS from hetzner (which is so cheap I always leave it running), I feel I always have a Linux system with me that makes a practical writing and programming platform.
Can the Pine phones be plugged into a large monitor?
I thought about doing something like this. But I eventually went with modularization. I 3D print for my raspberry, another one for my 7' touchscreen and got myself a wireless keyboard / mouse. This way I can use each element separate. For instance, sometimes I use my PI as a server, so I don't need a screen or keyboard. I found myself wanting the screen decoupled from the computer as well, cause it can be used with other devices. Heck, I even played xbox on it once (not so great experience). Here's my setup if anyone's interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F88CSWH8SEY
In this video, I'm using the PI as a retro game machine (I can swap the card to boot to other system)
I want to build something similar but with bare metal Lua as an educational computer for kids. For all of the STEM toys on the market none have the magic of a 8 bit machine that boots to Basic. Except in this day and age Basic should be replaced with Lua.
A guess (based on my experience with RPi): It’s handy if you can debug your RPi peripherals using a “normal” computer to make sure they work. You can even develop an application on a desktop with a fast CPU (for faster compilation) and then ship it to the RPi when you’re done.
So many people complaining about the price have obviously never tried to build something similar and sell it. Why do you all expect free designs and then complain about big companies being unenthical?
I assume a person or small team is trying to make up for the time spent desiging this?
You can't just add up all the components, add 10% on top and expect a price level that competes with Apple. Looks like a hobby project to me and there is no harm in supporting the creator.
Yeah I'm not sure about that either... All the parts look FDM printed too which is definitely way cheaper than that if you already own a printer. Perhaps they had some company print the parts?
Honestly for that kind of money you're getting kinda close to having them SLS printed which would be much sturdier and look nicer...
[+] [-] james412|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Abishek_Muthian|5 years ago|reply
The reason I want a portable Linux handheld computer is, because the direction in which smartphones are moving towards is frightening to say the least. Smartphones are essentially mobile computers and for many parts of the world the first computing experience. COVID-19 situation has shown how mobile computing has been taken for granted and misery of those who have no access to it[3].
Can we imagine a computer manufacturer selling $2000 computer which will receive security updates for only 3 years if lucky, can't install alternate operating systems or software of our choice? Then why are we providing smartphone manufacturers with such privileges? With that unfair advantage they are dictating mobile computing for the entire world. I'm afraid it's just a matter of time, when this trend scale up and affects overall computing in general.
[1]https://n-o-d-e.net/zeroterminal3.html
[2]https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone
[3]https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp...
[+] [-] joezydeco|5 years ago|reply
I get flashbacks to the college intern I interviewed that excitedly told me about the RPi telemetry design he created for a rocket. Got it all coded up and working great.
After some prodding he confessed that it failed on launch. The micro SD connector couldn’t take the vibration.
[+] [-] polishdude20|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dTal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glouwbug|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdasfasdfasdf|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] neilv|5 years ago|reply
If there shield-like RasPi touchscreen open source drivers, mainlined in Linux, and also included in Raspbian and Debian, I'd like to hear of it.
(Blob-free would also be nice, though the RasPi itself has blob problems, so isn't as good as it could be for open source.)
[+] [-] jdc|5 years ago|reply
EDIT:
if you want to have a look at the installer script it's here: https://github.com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-Scripts/b... (the business end starts at line 222)
[+] [-] pabs3|5 years ago|reply
https://github.com/librerpi/rpi-open-firmware https://github.com/itszor/vc4-toolchain/issues/7
[+] [-] fnord77|5 years ago|reply
> 3D printing, filaments, etc. 340.00
Is this just for the cost of the raw printstock? Or does it include the price of a low-end printer?
[+] [-] tpmx|5 years ago|reply
Yes! With a nice mechanical keyboard. I found a nice display for something like this a while ago; these 1280x400 pixel, 191 mm wide (visible area) IPS displays originally meant for automotive use:
https://www.buydisplay.com/catalogsearch/advanced/result/?re...
I don't think getting a reflective LCD display in this form factor is realistic these days, they stopped manufacturing those in the 80s. I bought this OLED 256x64 display to play with- it's got enough pixels to make it work, but it's just too small/high density to work well form-factor-wise with a full width tenkeyless keyboard.
[+] [-] xouse|5 years ago|reply
I'm guessing the rest of the price is paying to have it printed by a third party.
[+] [-] Ninjinka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dTal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fit2rule|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anthk|5 years ago|reply
A device with a monochrome screen, 800x480 resolution, 3D case with a qwerty keyboard shoudn't exceed $100.
They day a little netbook/palmtop arrives with Linux at a ridiculous price (the one of an RPI), it would be almost a second revolution as the zaurus.
Portable Nethack/IF/SSH/IRC/Usenet + coding, PDF/image/video viewer with framebuffer support, cheap audio from a SOC if any.
That would be my dream device.
[+] [-] DarthGhandi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] numpad0|5 years ago|reply
e: I checked supported devices list for PmOS “just to be sure” — I was genuinely pleasantly surprised
[+] [-] fit2rule|5 years ago|reply
http://pyra-handheld.com
https://openpandora.org
Disclaimer: I love my OpenPandora!
[+] [-] ppf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhbadger|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC
[+] [-] rockyj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Abishek_Muthian|5 years ago|reply
Can anyone share their browsing experience on 8GB RPi?
[+] [-] jmnicolas|5 years ago|reply
At the time I thought Windows IOT was not optimized, but maybe it's just the whole x86 ecosystem that hasn't been adapted to ARM computing.
I think you can install Android on a Pi, it would be interesting to see if Chrome is fast enough there.
[+] [-] tomcam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywittyname|5 years ago|reply
I bet you could CNC some injection molds the cost of 2-3 of these chassis. If someone could do that and sell the housing for ~$30 each, this would be an impressive piece of kit.
[+] [-] conk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|5 years ago|reply
I get that the parts are 3D printed, but are they being printed on-demand or something? I wonder if the 3D printing files have been open sourced - would be interesting to hear from a 3D printing enthusiast here about the costs (it's HN, there's bound to be many!).
[+] [-] dsr_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bfieidhbrjr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ninjinka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teleforce|5 years ago|reply
For an alternative hackable laptop like shell for RPi, consider the CrowPi2 [1]. It does not support touchscreen but the screen estate is much bigger (11.6") and can be configured with many sensors for testing and developing IoT based projects. As an added bonus the price is quite affordable for students and hobbyists. The review of CrowPi2 can be found here [2].
[1] http://linuxgizmos.com/hackable-crowpi2-steam-education-lapt...
[2] https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/crowpi2-review-raspbe...
[+] [-] curioussavage|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|5 years ago|reply
Getting either a Pine phone or Pine tablet sounds better. Do the Pine phones make sense just as Linux devices, not using them as a phone?
I always travel with a small iPad Pro, and with Mosh, tmux, and a really powerful VPS from hetzner (which is so cheap I always leave it running), I feel I always have a Linux system with me that makes a practical writing and programming platform.
Can the Pine phones be plugged into a large monitor?
[+] [-] atum47|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abraxas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschuster91|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Uehreka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ninjinka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|5 years ago|reply
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/2521
its possible, but hard and buggy
[+] [-] tudorizer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x775|5 years ago|reply
How can the 3D printing be that much?
[+] [-] tudorizer|5 years ago|reply
You can't just add up all the components, add 10% on top and expect a price level that competes with Apple. Looks like a hobby project to me and there is no harm in supporting the creator.
[+] [-] aarongough|5 years ago|reply
Honestly for that kind of money you're getting kinda close to having them SLS printed which would be much sturdier and look nicer...
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] srtjstjsj|5 years ago|reply
Is there no touchscreen / smallscreen friendly Linux desktop shell?
[+] [-] _def|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iso1631|5 years ago|reply