A Raspberry Pi Handheld Computer You Might Want To Use

August 27, 2022 by Jenny List 49 Comments

Amid the many wonderful form factors being explored by the makers of cyberdecks, there’s one that’s emerged which harks back to an earlier generation of portable computers: the handheld pad with a keyboard. These units are typically around the size of a hardback book, with the upper half being a screen and the lower a keyboard. The latest to come our way is from [Richard Sutherland], and it’s a very tidy pad computer indeed.

Inside the well-designed layered 3D printed case is the frequently-chosen Raspberry Pi 4, along with a PiSugar power supply board and 5,000 mAH battery and a 4.3″ touchscreen display. The keyboard has seen a lot of care and attention, featuring high-quality tactile switches that follow the Miryoku keyboard layout. He says it’s a thumb-typing keyboard, but anyone looking for more can either adapt the design to their liking or simply plug in an external board when faster typing is needed.

We like the pad computer trend as it offers useful computing power in a far more convenient format than a laptop, and we think this is a particularly nice one. It would be nice to see where people take this design, and who knows, we might give one a try for writing some Hackaday articles. If you’d like to see more pad computer goodness, we recently showed you one built in the shell of a classic Amstrad.

Paper Pi Is An Ergonomic Cyberdeck Meant For Thumbs

April 27, 2021 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

What’s the fastest way to master console stuff like screen or emacs? Force yourself to use it exclusively, of course. But maybe you’d be tempted to cheat with a desktop. We know we would be. In that case, you ought to build a console-only cyberdeck like this sweet little thing by [a8skh4].

This cyberdeck serves another purpose as well — the keyboard layout is Miryoku, so [a8ksh4] can get more practice with that at the same time. Fortunately, the layout is built for emacs.

Inside is a Raspberry Pi 4 and what looks to be an Arduino handling the keyboard input. The Paper Pi spotlights a 4.2″ e-ink screen between a split thumb keyboard that’s made of soft, silent, tactile switches.

Since they’re SMD, [a8ksh4] made clever use of header pins to get them to work with protoboard. As much as we love the keyboard, it would be awesome to see a few switches on the shoulders or even the back that make use of the rest of the fingers. Check out more build pictures in the gallery.

We love to see cyberdecks with split keyboards, because you shouldn’t have to sacrifice ergonomics in a portable computer. Here’s one that comes in three pieces, making it easy to get the spacing between the halves just right.

Via r/cyberdeck