As the 2020s are seeing the return of the flip phone, could we see a rebirth of other device form factors from before the slab era? [Eric Migicovsky] and [SQFMI] are working on a new physical keyboard device with the Beepberry.
Featuring a high contrast Sharp Memory LCD and the tried-and-true reliability of a BlackBerry keyboard, the device is designed for messaging all your contacts over WiFi without the distractions of a smartphone. As this is a collaboration with the Matrix-based chat service Beeper, the device is designed around the CLI version of their client.
If you want to eschew the distraction-free nature of the device, since it’s Pi-powered it can run any ARM Linux programs you might want as well being a playground for hardware mods. Add a DSP and headphone jack and this could be a neat little pianobar player. [Migicovsky] stresses this is currently a dev board and by no means should be assumed to be an off-the-shelf piece of kit.
If this looks like a familiar reuse of a BlackBerry keyboard, you might be remembering [arturo182]’s Keyboard Featherwing or this LoRa Messenger.
Anyone know what the watch is in the picture at the top of the article?
The SQFMI Watchy?
@Maddie said: “Anyone know what the watch is in the picture at the top of the article?”
Here ya go…
https://watchy.sqfmi.com/
And there’s a recently released film about Blackberry, the company.
Why use raspberry pi in something that should be low power device? It doesn’t even have sleep mode
I absolutely abhor RPi for lack of s2ram but recently when I decided to create a 10″ eink tablet for webbrowsing (reading tutorials and schematics) which I wanted to be a full Linux computer I couldn’t find any module with a similar form factor like Zero capable of running mainline or almost mainline kernel. OrangePi has Rockchip based compute board but I have no time to design a daghterboard with those fine pitched 100pin connectors I just need USB to connect Waveshare’s eink driver.
In fact I have so little time that I’m considering rather buying developer/beta edition of PineNote even though I don’t need digitizer and touchscreen.
PS: I absolutely love eink displays for they really are like paper i.e. *passive*. Multiday endurance on battery is low priority secondary goal for me that is why I made that compromise. Perhaps it is a goal with lower priority also for Beepberry’s author?
“with a similar form factor like Zero capable of running mainline or almost mainline kernel”
Pocket Beagle and those “compute stick/miniPC” comes to my mind. But I have never used them so don’t know how similar in size and possibilities those would be for you – and probably you already checked those.
Okay so the thing about this tho is that the FeatherWing DSKY is no longer available.
Like, forever. They’re gone.