Everybody loves the Cheap Yellow Display (CYD) ESP32 dev boards, so why not treat yours to a little PDA? That’s right: turn it into a Portable Digital Assistant and relive the glory days of Palm with this project from [sau412].
For those readers who are too young to remember, a PDA was basically a phoneless and cameraless smart-phone, and devices running Palm Corporation’s Palm OS ruled the roost for most of the 90s and early 2000s. [sau412] hasn’t written an emulator or port of Palm OS; rather he’s created his own firmware for the ESP32-based CYD that is inspired by the PDAs of yore, and has many features you’d have expected back in the day. That includes a Gopher browser, to let you check out the undying alternative to the World Wide Web. There isn’t a general-purpose web browser, but there are RSS and Wikipedia readers, and what else do you need? At least you won’t end up doomscrolling.
There are also a passel of games and a BASIC interpreter, and the usual practical things like a calendar, calculator and contact list. Everything from ebook readers to translators, all of it by [sau421]. If you’ve got a CYD kicking around, you could do worse than give it a little PDA. Using the web-based flasher, we had it up and running in five minutes or so, but without an SD card we couldn’t test all the apps.
This is hardly the first ESP32 PDA that we’ve featured, but leaning into the CYD means it’s the simplest project to replicate. If you’re jonesing for the original Palm OS experience on more modern hardware, Pumpkin OS can get you going on x86 or ARM.
good info btw
Is there a plugin for Graffiti text entry?
Nice! It’s very functional and has many neat programs, but I think it looks very contemprorary also (2020s-ish).
Like Windows 10 as a PDA, maybe. It features minimalism, in short.
Personally, I do Iike the more rounded icons of Palm OS 3.x or the interface of other older PDAs.
Such as Casio Pocket Viewer, Agenda VR3 Linux PDA, Cybiko handheld, Olivetti daVinci..
They all had some GUI elements here and there that looked ambitious.
But I’m sure that the interface can be overhauled in a future release.
with a psion 5mx style keyboard, the CYD and firmware like this would be a force to be reckoned with, especially as people made hyperoptimized apps
Psion-5 sized display and keyboard and a display that can handle 80 CpL? An external optional 4G/5G modem? SSH? SMTP? IMAP? SIGH!
you are giving me ideas what to with my dormant Psion 5mx .. how long does an ESP32 run on 2x AA batteries?
I wonder if it would be a good music player if it had a 3.5mm audio jack.
the sad reality is, map and browser is so useful than i will always carry around a smart phone so any technologically superior device would be redundant :(
and any bespoke hacked whatever becomes garbage the moment you put a web browser on it :(