The ESP32 family are the microcontrollers which just keep on giving, as new versions keep them up-to-date and plenty of hackers come up with new things for them. A popular device is a general purpose computer with a QWERTY keypad, and the latest of many we’ve seen comes from [StabbyJack]. It’s a credit card sized machine whose special trick is that its keyboard is integrated in the 3D printing of its case. We’ve seen rubber membranes and push in keys, but this one has flexible print-in-place keys that line up on the switches on its PCB.
It’s not complete yet but the hardware appears to be pretty much there, and aside from that keyboard it has an ESP32-S3 and a 1.9″ SPI LCD. When finished it aims for an ambitious specification, with thermal camera and time-of-flight range finder hardware, along with an OS and software to suit. We like it a lot, though we suspect it might be a little small for our fingers.
If you like this project you may appreciate another similar one, and perhaps your version will need an OS.
That’s really cool! 😎
Back in the 90s I had a calculator collection and
always wondered when we would get BASIC computers
in the size of those flat, telephone card sized solar calculators.
Sure, there were those pocket computers made by Sharp, such as PC-1500.
But they weren’t ~1mm flat like those solar calculators were from the 1970s onwards (CASIO SL-750 etc).
These pocket computers all were thicker than a CR2032 coin cell!
Dang I would love to have something like this. Especially if the screen was wider. Excited to see how they handled the keyboard
Nice little device
Just like a M5 S3 Stamp Cardputer