[Jankbu] needed a new computer, but had little interest in purchasing a modern laptop off the shelf. Instead, it was time to build a cyberdeck with a neat modular design to suit his exact needs.
The heart of the build is a Raspberry Pi 5, which provides a good amount of computing power for regular tasks. It’s wrapped up in a 3D-printed enclosure with rail mounts on the back, along with a NOS 450 TKL mechanical keyboard, offering full-travel keys in a compact layout. The 10.1″ IPS touchscreen display is mounted on sliding rails to cover the keyboard when it’s not needed. A smattering of buttons live around the screen, in a manner akin to so many industrial controllers. On either side, the deck has large grab handles, with one side featuring custom horizontal and vertical scroll controls, while the other rocks a trackball. Power is via NP-F batteries, which are more commonly used to run Sony camcorders.
Unlike so many cyberdecks, [Jankbu] didn’t just build the device to look cool—it also serves a practical purpose. It’s great for running Freecad, and the rail mounts on the rear make it perfect for mounting around the workshop during a job as needed. Files are on Github for those eager to learn more.
What’s fun about this build is that it’s not just a show piece, it’s something that gets used every day. That’s a testament to [Jankbu’s] well-reasoned design, that considered what the device was for before it was put together. We’ve featured plenty of other fantastic cyberdecks in the past, too. Video after the break.
Form over function, as usual.
Apparently not, which you’d know if you’d bothered to read the article…
yeah sometimes i read words and sometimes i believe them but i don’t always do both
How so? He ran a volume of iterations to get the functionality exactly as he wanted it. The form literally followed the function.
Really? I don’t know how you can say that. I can understand that you might find such a device awkward to use, but it’s not designed for you.
Nope, exactly the opposite. He started from his needs, crafted mockups in cardboard to check if the ergonomy was fit for his needs, iterated several times. You can´t be more wrong.
Form is beautiful indeed, and the result of hours and hours of persistence.
The form however is also not very good function wise. Has there been any cyberdeck that has looked functional? I’m almost convinced its impossible to make one that WOULD want to use while walking or standing at the bus stop.
Did you watch the video? He didn’t build it to use at the bus stop. He built it for his machine shop. Look at how it just clips onto his mill and he uses it to view the design of what he is working on.
He might just be talking it up for the video.. but it looks pretty convincing that for him, this form is very functional.
If you want to use a computer while really walking I’d have to ask what is wrong with you, it seems like a really daft place to really want to use a real computer 99% of the time. Most of those situations you’d be better off with the dedicated device with the right HID for the job not a general computer.
But as for making it functional in those positions if you really want to this really would not need much alteration – just make the shoulder strap go over to the other side of the machine so you can have the thing the right way up supporting nearly all the weight on your shoulders as you walk around and you are basically there. Which with these modular builds would be really quite trivial to change. That solution is very much what the RC community has done with their transmitters, and has been done with computers like Toughbooks for those rare cases your job demands such a feature – it works great.
Let’s see yours.
I love the keyboard. I don’t know how I feel about thumb typing while holding the handlebars. It looks pretty awesome though.
Looks like a RED camera had an encounter with something pulled out of the cockpit of an attack helicopter. That’s a good mix
Nice! Don’t see Red conments often!
Reminds me of my granddaughter’s ipad in its chonky kid case, except more target system-y. It is at least a viewable size screen and a keyboard, so that is a cut above some of the others I have seen.
Fisher Price Magnadoodle as envisioned by Bruce Sterling.
This is awesome,
Take it for what it is. Art. It’s pretty.
This is certainly the best looking cyberdecks I’ve seen. I really like it a lot. With the amount of effort that went into it, the choice of the pi5 seems less than ideal. Pis these days are a little overpriced for the power the offer (at least compared to Pis in the past), so I was hoping it was some Framework motherboard. I built my own modular Pi based micro laptop in the past, but it was built on my kitchen floor llke most of my projects, so the quality was lacking compared to this one. Maybe I’ll take another stab at it some day in the future, AFTER I get a proper workshop. Thanks for sharing.
Not sure you could fit a framework in something like this without really sacrificing on just about everything else the design is for, though I too hope to see more framework based builds. Yes Pi 5’s are not really cheap for the performance, but they are very performant for their tiny footprint and thermal demands, which in this case probably matters a great deal more. Also able to run off that camera battery, something I don’t know you’d be able to get a framework to do without hobbling its performance significantly.
Maybe that new Apple Neo thing would make a better choice, but again that would be very very expensive, has rather less IO and far as I know still locked to the Apple ecosystem. Or a Steamdeck motherboard perhaps, as again rather small, relatively low power draw for the performance so the cooling wouldn’t need to be too crazy, though again expensive..
A Framework mobo would certainly too large but a MNT Reform Pocket mobo would fit, and even better the mobo from the MNT Reform Next would also while keeping a modular port option available.
This would make a good Leela arm thingy
FreeCAD on a Pi5 ? Even my Ryzen7 with 32GB RAM is struggling when parts get a tad complicated …
You have to get to pretty crazy parts to make a Pi 4 suffer enough its really annoying, the Pi 5 is vastly more performant so I really want to know what you are doing to your models or what else is running on your system!
I for years did basically all my CAD on the Pi4 8 GB built into my desk, while it was also running a small VM and playing media (usually music but sometimes video) most of the time – absolutely silent as I’d strapped a huge heat sink to it, and barely any power consumption. Occasionally you’d have to be a little patient, but very rare it is enough you actually must move to the workstation, so it really shouldn’t be a real problem. The one thing you probably can’t do as the CAD gets complex is keep all your other ‘background’ tasks you might keep on another computer like a browser running, as those things are so greedy on RAM.
Only reason I stopped using it is the PSU let out the magic smoke eventually and I’ve not gotten round to replacing it as I’ve been hoping to replace/upgrade the whole desk anyway.
I would like to see this desk! And its proposed replacement, if you ever get around to that :-)
The Current desk is just a quickly modified (intended to be temporary solution) rectangular 5’x3′ ish dining table from a charity shop, looks far better than the virtue of its construction really. Though it is lasting rather well really, the only huge problem with it is I foolishly didn’t design it to be put on wheels, and there is no good way to modify it now to solve that – So every time anything needs unplugging on the back its really really annoying to move it off the wall for access, as its was a heavy table before you put many kilo of electronics on it.
I simply made the legs offset to the rear for leg room, added a cantilever foot for balance and some shelves between them to hold the large Inkjet, tower PC, UPS, underneath and with a box of 3 main compartments on the top (designed to be the monitor stand for 3 small monitors). In one of those boxes on top the Pi lives, along with its dead PSU a bench-top power supply, a powered USB hub (for the Pi) and most of the screwdrivers, probes, and multimeter stuff for electronics. Pretty small space to shove so much pretty much regular audio amp sized (which is what one of the other boxes is used for).
So wheels and I’d like to add some sit/stand function to the top of the new on as well I think – recently built a small indoor project bench based on a cheap set of sit stand legs that were on sale and have found height adjustment for the task at hand is actually rather nice.
Cracking form and excellent function. The video was really good. I enjoyed seeing the workflow throughout the creation and the thoughtflow behind it all.
Walking into a computer store these days is a dreary and unsatisfying experience. But I like that it became part of the spark that fired up this project
I wonder if he is a racing fan. It looks to me a lot like a Formula 1 steering wheel.