I love small things that does compute since my childhood. But ive never had a chance to own something with tiny keyboard except some symbian phones.
And ive never seen someone using like this Psion or similiar form factor devices around me either.
The closest i got(except 15 inch huge laptop) was htc pda but that didnt have qwerty keyboard and felt like windows mobile was just a skinned symbian.
So i wanted to build my own, the point wasnt building Cyberdeck, i wanted to have something pocketable as umpc or more features but not bigger than netbooks.
First iteration was handheld size:
Later I choosed netbook size because displays were expensive and hooking up old phone via vnc was not good experience.
I already had raspberry pi 3, portable dvd player, some arduino modules and bunch of junk that i scraped from old electronic stuff for years that i couldnt just trow it. It should be battery powered and gpio pins should be exposed as i want to easily connect disconnect bunch of stuff. if i got a room inside portable dvd player, i could put some basic stuffs built in like infrared, rfid reader, radio antenna, thermal printer etc.
I started with modifying mini keyboard as it was powered by non-rechargable batteries. I soldered some wires to it to feed with 3v.
Luckiliy my dvd player had av in so i didnt have to buy display. I configured raspbian os to force booting composite.
For the connection with dvd player and rpi,
to make it less messy i had two options: either i was gonna draw
some pcb to raspberry pi and dvd driver board to sit or solder it. Below you will see the worst soldering job on planet but its not because of me. My soldering irons are pretty bad and i had to use their side screws to solder because the tip doesnt get hot. welp, i used hot glue to secure my solders...
Project stopped because i accidently dropped plier on my raspberry pi and it shorted i guess power module is gone. I will revisit this project in the future when i have proper budget and access to 3d printer , i hope...
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