cyberdeck

96 Articles

Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Folding Keyboard Mod

December 5, 2024 by 3 Comments

Let’s face it, failed Kickstarters are no good. But they can spark good things, like real versions of technologies that might have actually been faked for the platform. A touchscreen mouse, for instance, with shortcuts that can be programmed for various applications.

A DIY mouse with a large touch screen.
Image by [Sam Baker] via Hackaday.IO
This story is one of scope creep, as [Sam Baker] says in the project details. At first, he thought he could just basically duct tape a touchscreen with shortcuts to an existing mouse. A couple of mouse teardowns later, [Sam] arrived at the conclusion that things would not be so simple.

After some digging around, [Sam] found a repository where someone created a way to communicate with the ADNS-5050 optical sensor, so [Sam] started by creating a breakout board for this sensor. By combining that with an ESP32 dev board and a touchscreen, [Sam] had his shortcut mouse.

Does it work? Yes. Is it useful? Well, yes. And also no. The beauty part of using a regular mouse is that you don’t have to look down at it to know where the buttons are. In the future, [Sam] would like to implement some kind of buttons for tactility. In the meantime, haptic feedback could be nice.

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Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Typo

November 18, 2024 by 15 Comments

Ceci n’est pas une keyboard, sure. But it’s keyboard-adjacent, and how. [Joshua Bemenderfer]’s wrists are tired of moving off the keyboard in order to mouse, and he decided to create a trackball that can sit just below the Space bar. The idea is to get rid of the regular mouse entirely if this works out.

A split keyboard with a DIY trackball beneath the Space bar.
Image by [Joshua Bemenderfer] via Hackaday.IO
And sure, the Ploopy family of open-source mice would welcome him with open arms, but they don’t come cheap. [Joshua]’s plan here is to make something for under $10. Ideally, less than $5.

Starting with an off-the-shelf trackball, the first BOM came in around $25 if you throw in $5 for the 3D printing of the case. [Joshua] added some cheap ceramic bearings to make it better. Since this was still too high, he turned to the internals of cheap mice.

Trial and error has resulted in a 99-cent special from Ali being the idea candidate. There are even cheaper mice to be had, but this one has an ideal layout for doing a bit of surgery. It also requires remapping since [Joshua] is flipping the sensor upside down and using a POM ball on top of it. Now he just needs to figure out how to add buttons and make them split keyboard-friendly.

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The Woodworker’s Cyberdeck

October 28, 2024 by 9 Comments

Computers were supposed to be personal, customizable, and cool. At times, in this cold modern world, we forget that. However, the cyberdeck scene is chock full of people building creative, original computers that suit their own tastes, aesthetics, and needs. [DIY Tinkerer] is one such individual, and he made the most of his woodworking skills when it came time to build his own cyberdeck!

The technological basics are along the lines of what we’re used to in this field. The build is based around a Raspberry Pi 4, with [DIY Tinkerer] selecting an 8 GB model for his needs. It’s paired with a 9000 mAh onboard battery, and there’s a power jack on the front to let the thing run on anything from 5 to 20 volts DC. For ease of use, there’s a multi-memory card reader and several USB 3 ports available.

The rest of the video focuses on the woodworking side of things. [DIY Tinkerer] shows us how he managed to build a new housing out of a rugged plastic case that would also be practical to use. The final product is both functional and attractive, and comes with an oscilloscope built in to boot! It came a long way from his earlier build, too.

We’ve seen a great load of cyberdeck builds over the years.

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Cyberpack Puts All The Radios Right On Your Back

September 25, 2024 by 28 Comments

A disclaimer: Not a single cable tie was harmed in the making of this backpack cyberdeck, and considering that we lost count of the number of USB cables [Bag-Builds] used to connect everything in it, that’s a minor miracle.

The onboard hardware is substantial, starting with a Lattepanda Sigma SBC, a small WiFi travel router, a Samsung SSD, a pair of seven-port USB hubs, and a quartet of Anker USB battery banks. The software defined radio (SDR) gear includes a HackRF One, an Airspy Mini, a USRP B205mini, and a Nooelec NESDR with an active antenna. There are also three USB WiFi adapters, an AX210 WiFi/Bluetooth combo adapter, a uBlox GPS receiver, and a GPS-disciplined oscillator, both with QFH antennas. There’s also a CatSniffer multi-protocol IoT dongle and a Flipper Zero for good measure, and probably a bunch of other stuff we missed. Phew!

As for mounting all this stuff, [Bag-Builds] went the distance with a nicely designed internal frame system. Much of it is 3D printed, but the basic frame and a few rails are made from aluminum. The real hack here, though, is getting the proper USB cables for each connection. The cable lengths are just right so that nothing needs to get bundled up and cable-tied. The correct selection of adapters is a thing of beauty, too, with very little interference between the cables despite some pretty tightly packed gear.

What exactly you’d do with this cyberpack, other than stay the hell away from airports, police stations, and government buildings, isn’t exactly clear. But it sure seems like you’ve got plenty of options. And yes, we’re aware that this is a commercial product for which no build files are provided, but if you’re sufficiently inspired, we’re sure you could roll your own.

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VR Headset With HDMI Input Invites A New Kind Of Cyberdeck

September 1, 2024 by 30 Comments

Meta’s Quest VR headset recently got the ability to accept and display video over USB-C, and it’s started some gears turning in folks’ heads. [Ian Hamilton] put together a quick concept machine consisting of a Raspberry Pi 400 that uses a VR headset as its monitor, which sure seems like the bones of a new breed of cyberdeck.

With passthrough on, one still sees the outside world.

The computer-in-a-keyboard nature of the Pi 400 means that little more than a mouse and the VR headset are needed to get a functional computing environment. Well, that and some cables and adapters.

What’s compelling about this is that the VR headset is much more than just a glorified monitor. In the VR environment, the external video source (in this case, the Raspberry Pi) is displayed in a window just like any other application. Pass-through can also be turned on, so that the headset’s external cameras display one’s surroundings as background. This means there’s no loss of environmental awareness while using the rig.

[Note: the following has been updated for clarity and after some hands-on testing] Video over USB-C is technically DisplayPort altmode, and both the video source and the USB-C cable have to support it. In [Ian]’s case, the Raspberry Pi 400 outputs HDMI and he uses a Shadowcast 2 capture card to accept HDMI on one end and outputs video over USB-C on the other.

Here’s how it works: the Quest has a single USB-C port on the side, and an app (somewhat oddly named “Meta Quest HDMI link”) running on the headset takes care of accepting video over USB and displaying it in a window within the headset. The video signal expected is UVC (or USB Video Class), which is what most USB webcams and other video devices output. (There’s another way to do video over USB-C which is technically DisplayPort altmode, and both the video source and the USB-C cable have to support it. That is not what’s being used here; the Quest does not support this format. Neither is it accepting HDMI directly.) In [Ian]’s case, the Raspberry Pi 400 outputs HDMI and he uses a Shadowcast 2 capture card to accept HDMI on one end and output UVC video on the other, which is then fed into the Quest over a USB-C cable.

As a concept it’s an interesting one for sure. Perhaps we’ll see decks of this nature in our next cyberdeck contest?

Kali Cyberdeck Looks The Business

August 7, 2024 by 17 Comments

Even though we somewhat uncharacteristically don’t have a cyberdeck contest currently underway, there’s never a bad time to get your [Gibson] on. That’s especially true when fate hands you an enclosure as perfect as the one that inspired this very compact Kali Linux cyberdeck.

Now, that’s not to say that we don’t love larger cyberdecks, of course. The ones built into Pelican-style shipping containers are particularly attractive, and it’s hard to argue against their practicality. But when [Hans Jørgen Grimstad], who somehow just sounds like a person who should be building cyberdecks, found a new-old-stock stash of US Army Signal Corps spare parts kits from the 1950s, designation CY-684/GR, he just had to spring into action. After carefully gutting the metal case of the dividers that once protected tubes and other parts, he had some PCB panels made up for the top and bottom. The bottom had enough room for a compact USB keypad, with room left over on the panel for a cooling fan and various connectors. A 7″ HDMI display was added to the panel on the top lid, while a Raspberry Pi 5 with a 500-GB NVMe SSD went below the lower panel. The insides are properly decorated with cyberpunk-esque regalia including a “Self Destruct” button. Sadly, this appears to be unimplemented in the current version, at least for the stated purpose; there’s always hope for version two.

While we love the look and feel of this build and the subtle nods to the cyberpunk aesthetic, it sure seems like you could get some serious work done with a deck like this. Hats off to [Hans] for the build, and here’s hoping he left some of those cool cases for the rest of us.

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Linux Handheld Packs Dual Batteries So It’s Never Out Of Juice

August 3, 2024 by 23 Comments

There was a time — not so long ago — when a handheld terminal would have been an expensive and exotic piece of kit. Now, all it takes is a Raspberry Pi and an off-the-shelf TFT display, as [ZitaoTech] shows us.

The resemblance to a Blackberry isn’t a coincidence

Admittedly, we are now seeing these all over the place, but this build looks well thought out. It looks suspiciously like a Blackberry, which isn’t a bad thing. It also has an interesting dual-battery system that lets you swap between two identical Nokia BL-5C batteries without missing a beat.

The device looks like a Blackberry because it uses the Q10 or Q20 Blackberry keyboard. There is a pass-through switch that lets you use the keyboard and pointer as a USB device on a different host computer.

Rounding out the design are three USB ports, an I2C port, and a TF card slot. Size-wise, the device is about 140 mm tall and 82 mm wide. The thickness is less than 16 mm. Even with the batteries, it weighs a lot less than 200 grams.

In the “Something-you-can-try” directory, there are images for Windows 3.1, mini VMAC, and — of course — DOOM. As you might expect, most of the project is 3D printing the intricate case.

We’ve seen similar projects, including one that has a case inspired by the ZX Spectrum. Then there is Beepy.