
Travels with a Pi (2018) - FerretFred
https://petergarner.net/notes/index.php?thisnote=20180202-Travels+with+a+Pi
======
andrey_utkin
Thanks for sharing this.

So you don't run Xorg at all, right? And you don't carry around any persistent
video output?

I am running Raspbian Desktop on RPi0w, using Vufine+ head-mounted display and
Twiddler 3 as a keyboard.

It is cool, it can even run heavyweight web stuff like Slack in Chromium, and
VLC with 720p video. Has some reliability issues with graphical stuff - have
to restart lightdm sometimes after such heavy exercises. I wouldn't imagine
RPi Zero could do that much with so little, but the man always want more, so I
am considering more powerful computing core for my wearable computer. Trimming
down use of GUI apps is another venue for progress, of course.

~~~
kingosticks
> I am running Raspbian Desktop on RPi0w, using Vufine+ head-mounted display
> and Twiddler 3 as a keyboard.

Wow! I had no idea you could get something like that. Can I ask what's your
use-case? Do you us it when on the move, commuting maybe? Do you get a lot of
stares? Can you realistically type on the Twiddler or is it more of a remote
control for accessing some predefined shortcuts?

~~~
andrey_utkin
Thanks for your interest.

Yes, this is mind-blowing that you can do this today with affordable off-the-
shelf devices. I did this after reading
[https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/circuitbreaker/2017/7/...](https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/circuitbreaker/2017/7/27/16035508/diy-
wearable-computer-google-glass-raspberry-pi-instructions)

Use-case... Original idea was to do whatever I like to do on my Linux laptops,
carrying less weight on the go.

I try it out on different things, like working on my calendar in web UI,
writing a diary, being on Slack and Jabber, navigating with maps app (Marble),
watching conference talks... I expect it will be pretty good for terminal apps
like vim and mutt, but unfortunately I haven't found time to try out working
with mail this way yet, and I am still slowly getting better at speed typing
on the Twiddler, so I haven't wrote much text. By the way, there are great
opportunities for text to speech and speech to text applications, just use a
bluetooth earpiece.

It is a nice ultra-portable general purpose computer, but I haven't found a
strong "killer app" where such configuration beats both laptop and a
smartphone. But I'm still exploring what I can do with it.

One solid usecase for carrying RPi0W on me or in my backpack is getting
calendar events notifications to my MiBand3. But this doesn't involve keyboard
and HMD.

There are constraints of all sorts - RPi performance, limited clearly visible
area, level of brightness is not adaptable (unusable in darkness and in bright
sunlight). It's hard to use this stuff, but it's fun to learn and master it. I
hope this kind of computing grows its niche and we see new generations of
hardware and software with this usecase in mind.

~~~
floren
It's pretty neat what you can do these days off-the-shelf. I've got a Twiddler
3 although I haven't used it much. The Vufine looks like quite a display for
$200 compared to what you could get 10 years ago (when I last played with
wearable computing).

I vacillate between wanting a wearable computer and wanting absolutely nothing
to do with a wearable computer. In my most optimistic moments, I envision a
useful note-taking device and (given a camera) a way to document interesting
things. In my less optimistic moods, I consider how I already waste so much
time reading bullshit on my phone! I think the best way to do it would be to
script up particular activities (take a picture and tag it, make a text /
dictated note, refer to a wikipedia article) and make those easy, while making
it as hard as possible to bring up Firefox :)

How often do you wear it?

~~~
andrey_utkin
It's pretty much impossible to waste time reading bullshit on Vufine. Focusing
on the display and moving the eyeball takes some effort. So it's tiresome to
read on it for long time uninterrupted. But it is good for occasional
glancing. Basically, it is a bad fit for content consumption (watching
optimised videos from local disk is ok experience, tho), but is promising for
other uses including writing text. Which is compelling to many HN people!

I use it as rarely as 1-2 times a week, just so I explore the possibilities
and practice a bit. Not much time to work on perfecting wearable workflows,
but I have some plans.

~~~
floren
Interesting, I'm rather glad to hear the Vufine isn't suitable for
reddit/youtube/other bullshit! Makes me more likely to buy one :)

One more quick question, what do you use to power the RPi and the display? USB
power bank?

~~~
andrey_utkin
Yes. Look for one which sustains stable uninterrupted power output during
charging and charger plugging and unplugging.

------
tlrobinson
I like this idea, but not the idea of having to find a TV with HDMI to use it.

What’s a good small netbook with HDMI out, for when you do you have a
TV/monitor available?

The Pinebook is $100
[https://www.pine64.org/pinebook/](https://www.pine64.org/pinebook/)

On the higher end there’s GPD mini laptops
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MMSQ9ZM/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MMSQ9ZM/)

I wonder if a tablet with attachable keyboard could get around the laptop in
carry-on bans.

~~~
occamschainsaw
There’s also the Cosmo [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cosmo-
communicator](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cosmo-communicator)

It’s expensive and in prototype stage, but looks like a promising project.

~~~
dTal
If we're allowed to list products in the prototype stage, the Pyra Handheld
deserves a mention. Of course it's been in prototype stage for a lot longer
than Cosmo, and its raw specs look a wee bit dated for a premium device
(although still quite generous for a mobile device), but at the current point
in time it's the closest mainline-Linux mobile device to production, in a race
with PinePhone and Librem 5 (both of which are very exciting, but compared to
Pyra have inferior specs and no keyboard).

[https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/](https://pyra-
handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/)

------
syntheticnature
For those who didn't notice, there are two follow-on posts that I also found
interesting:

[https://petergarner.net/notes/index.php?thisnote=20180511-Tr...](https://petergarner.net/notes/index.php?thisnote=20180511-Travels+with+a+Pi+%282%29)

[https://petergarner.net/notes/index.php?thisnote=20190205-Tr...](https://petergarner.net/notes/index.php?thisnote=20190205-Travels+with+a+Pi+%283%29)

------
FerretFred
Please excuse the slowness of my site - it's running on a Raspberry Pi... ;-)

~~~
rohan1024
Really? Do you have static IP?

~~~
FerretFred
I do indeed - I'm guarding that IP address carefully :)

------
LeonM
I love this kind of stuff! I don't travel for work, so I never had a good
excuse to set something like this up.

Not having a screen is a bit of a downside, you could use your phone as a
screen but that would defeat the purpose as you can SSH into a box at
home/work from your phone.

I personally have a cheap (200 euro) 11" Acer ES1 laptop with Linux installed
that I leave in my car or suitcase for those moments that I am not
willing/able to take my work laptop. It runs for about 14 hours on a charge
and can be charged directly from my car's 12V outlet. It can boot from a SD-
card or even boot straight from the internet. The keyboard is actually really
nice.

~~~
cr0sh
If I left a laptop in my vehicle it'd turn into a taco in the Phoenix
summertime...lol! Where do you live that you're able to do this?

~~~
LeonM
Europe (Netherlands). The climate here is quite mild.

I drive a saloon car, so I can keep the laptop in the trunk, which is quite
well insulated. I won't recommend keeping a laptop (or anything for that
matter) in the cabin.

------
crusso
Very cool. I use RPis when I travel as gateways, device interfaces, and
sometimes just for a remote shell. You've given me some good information and
ideas to make my experience better.

One request, though, from your snippet of Python: _print GetCPUserial()_

C'mon, man... we've got to kill Python 2. Everywhere.

~~~
bgeeek
Get a gl router and put openwrt on it. Much better as a travel device. Add an
RPi for pihole. Cracking little kit.

~~~
crusso
Why much better? More performance? Is OpenWRT on it a stable Linux with as
good package support as I get with Raspbian?

A router probably isn't going to have HDMI on it, which is nice to have in a
pinch.

I also use RPis for various GPIO needs.

There's something to be said for having one device that fills a bunch of
needs. You get really familiar with that device (and its quirks) and then you
can use it in many different contexts.

~~~
bgeeek
Because, iirc, USB and networking share the bus - it was impossible for me to
create a private WiFi network with an RPi alone. Performance was horrendous.

~~~
crusso
Oh, okay, so you're talking about being able to use it as a "travel router". I
normally don't need that, although I have a usb wifi stick on order just in
case.

True, performance could be better. I wish it were more in line with the odroid
family.

~~~
bgeeek
Yep, it's awful - they really do need to fix that issue on them. I've happily
bought every revision of the RPi and use them in a multiple places for
different tasks, so it's not like I'm too critical of them. I've had them
monitoring my UPS, time servers, pi-hole, amateur radio, retro-gaming, etc.
The GL AR150 is a smaller form factor than a standard RPi and compliments it
brilliantly when travelling.

------
bobongo
Is there a "laptop shell" type of product that one could put in a pi and be
done with it?

Something like,

1\. Buy laptop shell, pi, portable battery

2\. Open the shell, put pi in, connect it to the laptop shell's keyboard,
trackpad, display

3\. Put in the battery, connect to battery

4\. Close the shell

5\. It's a laptop.

~~~
dchest
Pi-top (but has built-in battery).

------
rjsw
A Pinebook is basically a dev board close in size to a RPi in a laptop style
case.

~~~
Wheaties466
It sure is. I love mine.

------
siffland
Get a Banana Pi M2 Zero for the same price and much faster. Yeah not as much
support, but will still run a desktop.

SBC's are getting better and better. I am just waiting for better storage and
usb3 on the tiny ones (some have it)

~~~
kingosticks
Agreed it's faster but it's not the same price in the UK. The Banana Pi M2
Zero costs ~£20 compared to ~£12.50 (delivered) for a Raspberry Pi Zero W.

------
galfarragem
My laptop (from 2012) might die soon and I'm thinking to replace it with
Raspberry Pi 3B+. These kind of computers can be an option for light computing
while traveling. I just wonder if it can run Sublime.

~~~
FerretFred
Probably not - I don't believe ARM is supported. See
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SublimeText/comments/9p7xxd/can_sub...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SublimeText/comments/9p7xxd/can_sublime_text_work_for_raspberry_pi_arm_64_bits/)

~~~
teknologist
Those Intel Compute Sticks are pretty cool and can plug straight into a hotel
room TV. Pair that with a bluetooth keyboard/mouse and it can be a solid
experience. I don't know if they still update them...

~~~
siffland
I have an intel compute stick that came with Widnows 10. It has 32GB of
internal storage, the issue is the newest windows update wont fit on the silly
thing. I got around it buy attaching a usb drive for the update and that left
very little romm for ANYTHING. I did put ubuntu on it and it is better. But
still tight.

Still cheap and fun to play with.

~~~
wang_li
You can supply your own 64 GB SD/eMMC card and set the bios to boot from that.

~~~
siffland
Mine is a cheap one, it does not have an external sdcard slot. It just has the
internal 32GB, 1 usb3 and 1 usb2 slot and the HDMI port (and wireless and
bluetooth). So i could boot from an external USB, but that kinda kills the
point of the computer stick :)

------
lifeisstillgood
I missed the screen part ... what is he / you using as a display? Am I missing
something?

~~~
FerretFred
I use anything with an HDMI socket, or now that I have an HDMI-VGA adapter,
VGA.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Ah. I once had a plan to make a train / coach laptop - keyboard on my lap,
screen hung over the seat in front and commute time coding was a neck-pain-
free idea

------
everdrive
This is a really interesting article. I'm going to take some of your ideas and
use them at home. Thanks for sharing!

I should note that during the workweek I'm using a Raspberry Pi 3 as my
primary PC. (just to save power, and keep internet tasks productive.) And,
just as you guessed there are no problems with the GUI on the Pi3.

------
mlukaszek
Nowhere near the price point, I know, but getting something like Intel's
Compute Stick or its knock-off would result in much more pleasant experience -
it's standard Atom CPU with 2GB of RAM plus enough storage, and 2 USB ports.
They usually sell around $100, second hand.

~~~
tlrobinson
I was going to say, the Pi Zero seems like an odd choice given there are many
much more powerful SBCs for not _that_ much mores or that much larger.

~~~
FerretFred
I considered quite a few SBCs when I was mooting this project, but I had a
spare Zero in the drawer at the time. Battery life was a big driver too, and
the Zero is great at this. Lastly, in its original configuration it cost about
$10/£10. If something with a similar spec comes up, but is maybe smaller I'll
look at the that as well.

~~~
skykooler
For something smaller and lower power consumption, you might check out the
Arietta board:
[https://www.acmesystems.it/arietta](https://www.acmesystems.it/arietta)

It's about half the size of the Pi Zero, and can enter an ultra-low-power mode
consuming only ~5 mA (and resume in 160 ms).

------
molecule
_> I decided early on to edit the menus to remove a lot of the "junk" and
replace it with my list of apps, so I fired up the Main Menu Editor app.
Normally this is quite responsive, but on the resource-challenged Zero it had
worrying lags and pauses as changes were made. Ultimately, it meant that my
ad-hoc menus were corrupted and worse still, the default Pi menus had been
reinstated._

If I understand Raspian’s portability correctly, this could be mitigated by
preparing the system disk on a Pi w/ more resources, e.g. a Pi3– run Main Menu
Editor w/ system disk in Pi3, then put system disk in Pi Zero W when menus are
edited to satisfaction.

------
bound008
How do you achieve FDE on a Pi type device? The author states the companies
strict data policies, but seems the solution is carrying unencrypted data, and
a modifiable boot environment in their wallet?

Not trying to point out any shortcomings, I honestly want to know if people
reading this have a solution. Many people are relying on Pi(s) to self host
data to keep it secure, despite the Pi as a platform not offering any
protection in this regard.

EDIT: (Forgot to mention the Microsoft folding keyboard as the "best" of the
super portable keyboards, which is still not that great, but has saved me when
my MacBook has developed stuck keys)

~~~
opencl
It runs Linux, you achieve FDE the same way as any normal Linux system with
LUKS aside from a few minor complications.

[https://robpol86.com/raspberry_pi_luks.html](https://robpol86.com/raspberry_pi_luks.html)

~~~
bound008
Thanks! Wasn't sure if any of these solutions were easily achieved on all of
these ARM devices. Would love to hear any experience on performance, although
when you are on a Pi Zero, that doesn't seem too important. At least I can
move my PiHole from docker to a fun little device that can display stats on an
OLED screen!

~~~
opencl
The original Pi and Zero can only hit about 3MB/s with LUKS. The newer models
can do around 10. Might be usable if you only encrypt your home folder.

------
Havoc
>My hatred for Bluetooth grows...

Same. It was completely missing from the device manager on my laptop for 4
days. Now it's back. Nothing bloody changed??

And now I've got a BT dongle in the post which apparently I no longer need.
wth

------
jsjohnst
I find it rather cute he knows of gopher, but doesn’t seem to know about
running multiple consoles on separate ttys at once and using the function keys
to toggle between them. Sure, tmux arguably is better, but still ironic to me.

------
ngcc_hk
Strange for the author to say about gopher. But it is an important step. Sadly
I think the forward and backward are hard to use.

------
sorenjan
This seems like an annoying bodge to carry around. I would prefer an Android
phone with some kind of Linux solution[0]. Built in display and battery, and
you can use video out if you need a bigger display. Built in cell modem too,
you could SSH to a server somewhere and not even need to download the SD card
image.

[0] [https://maruos.com/](https://maruos.com/)

~~~
bloopernova
I think my travel setup would be something like this:

* Android tablet plus stand, running Termux+SSH+Tmux. * SIM card of some description * USB Hub * Big Ol' Battery >=20,000mAh * Small Mechanical Keyboard * Wired Mouse

That would also allow me to connect to my Amazon Workspace for work email, but
mostly I'd be VPN+SSH to a dev VM somewhere.

While it wouldn't be quite as useful as my work Macbook, it would be much
safer since no work information would be traveling with me, nor would TSA be
able to do me any significant harm by searching through those devices.

~~~
bronco21016
This is kind of where I am. My job requires I carry an iPad around. I have a
keyboard and mouse and use Jump Desktop to remote into a Windows 10 VM and
Mosh, Blink, and tmux to remote into the Linux server itself.

I still find I’m wanting more though. Having a locally available machine would
solve a lot of issues with bandwidth. For example, iOS is capable of using
Cryptomator but using it with WebDAV on my server at home means every file
needs to download each time it’s opened. Or say I capture some great video and
want to move it to the VM for editing or download content from server for
local editing. This takes forever on LTE or WiFi.

I’ve been looking at the WD My Passport Wireless but I think longer term a
better choice may be an ODROID-HC1 with a large SSD. Think of it as like a
mobile cloud. It could act as the WiFi gateway for all devices, run through a
VPN, provide local storage via SMB, SFTP, or WebDAV, run a Plex server without
needing connectivity, and provide a local Linux environment for or the times
you don’t have connectivity. Additionally nearly any tablet or phone like
device could be setup to access it.

------
taneq
It seems like a neat hack but for an actual computer to travel with, getting a
real ultrabook (or better yet a nice 2-in-1) will make your life immeasurably
more pleasant. Maybe I'm becoming less of a hacker. :/

~~~
FerretFred
Aha! Look at it this way - I can afford for my "computer" to be lost, stolen
or confiscated by Border Guards at whatever territory I happen to be in, safe
in the knowledge I can put my microSDHC card into any Raspberry Pi I can lay
my hands on. Another Zero is okay, but it will work in any of the other
models. My job doesn't require the luxury of a GUI, so it's ideal. Now, where
to hide that microSDHC card...

~~~
taneq
Fair enough, but if the secret sauce is your micro-SD card then there's no
reason to stop people looking at your computer, so it's not at risk of being
mugged by a customs agent and so it might as well be a nice one.

I can definitely see other scenarios (staying in ultra poor areas with high
crime, maybe?) where having an ultra-cheap and easily replaceable device would
be good though.

