
Trying to build the ultimate Raspberry Pi computer – Zero Terminal V3 - Abishek_Muthian
https://n-o-d-e.net/zeroterminal3.html
======
verytrivial
<grumble>HN has given N O D E love for the design aesthetic of the
presentation and video format recently, but it feels like I'm being fed the
details via Morse code. It's infuriating! There is no summary, no overview, no
block diagram, just a wall of transcribed prose and gamble on a non-indexed,
un-subtitled 8 minute video. I imagine many people (myself included!) will
just go "Okay, there a black brick and screen thing with an RPi zero (or is it
a different model?) in it ... or something" and move on.

Perhaps this is intentional in the same way the OpenBSD homepage is
purposefully ugly, to scare off people and create a small effort-
moat.</grumble>

~~~
Panino
> purposefully ugly

I've been using OpenBSD for about 20 years so I feel like I can talk about
this issue.

If you browse web.archive.org for old copies of the www.openbsd.org site,
you'll notice that the current design is from many years ago, back when lots
of websites looked like that.

It appears that the current design is from around the year 2000:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20010118233800/http://www.openbs...](https://web.archive.org/web/20010118233800/http://www.openbsd.org/)

And that one of the oldest archived versions of the page, from 1997, already
had much of the same information and organization, just with less color:

[https://web.archive.org/web/19970327004719/http://www.openbs...](https://web.archive.org/web/19970327004719/http://www.openbsd.org/)

Over the years there have been attempts by users to redesign the site. Each
had their own problems. I think that for a site redesign to be accepted, it
would need to be a major improvement both technically and aesthetically, and
for maintenance of the new site to be real easy. OpenBSD devs don't want a
bunch of churny work hoisted on them.

Just as an aside, I've noticed in this thread that you're making low-effort,
kind of rude posts about an important project that's not even related to the
actual subject, which is Raspberry Pi. Why are you doing that?

~~~
verytrivial
> I've noticed in this thread that you're making low-effort, kind of rude
> posts about an important project

I'm sorry if it came across like that. I didn't put this comment there to
upset you or anyone, but this happens. I was referring to what appeared to be
a design choices in how some projects present themselves to the world, not as
a judgement around how important they are. I watched the whole video (with
some skipping) for this post. My point was many people might not given the
design choices made in how it was presented. I guess "important" projects
don't even need to be popular or accessible to do what they need or want to
do, and I was simply musing. e.g. You have an explanation for why OpenBSD
presents itself they way it does because you are convinced of its value, so
you see something different when you look at the homepage vs how ... nearly
all? ... other people might see it. My point was is looks like it was designed
by engineers with more important matters to think about, but that's some
encoding not available to everyone. (And maybe that's okay, hence a small moat
around the project.)

~~~
verytrivial
I have realised since writing this that the topic is actually "gatekeeping".
It can feel icky advocating for it. OP is a talented and driven creator who
owes us exactly _nothing_ in explanation, but if a hypothetical creator would
prefer we _at least watch the damn video_ that can be an entirely reasonable
cost of entry. I guess my question was whether it was intentional! Sorry if my
OpenBSD comparison clanged. That OS is righteous.

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Abishek_Muthian
Now this, this is a project we can all get behind. Adding radio with kill-
switch and getting PostmarketOS working on this will essentially make this a
smartphone replacement to reclaim mobile computing from the duopoly.

Also, N-O-D-E publishes all the requisite files; Essentially making this a
'Build your own smartphone' project and those who don't want to get their
hands dirty could order one from the website when available.

~~~
saagarjha
> will essentially make this a smartphone replacement to reclaim mobile
> computing from the duopoly

I think it’s a bit too thick to reclaim anything, to be honest, but its nerd
cred is off the charts.

~~~
tomcooks
I'd rather have a thick phone than a slim chance of not being tracked.

I'll build mine with a metal casing and a GPS for outdoor shenanigans, as
sturdy as an AK-47 and as thick as the SCIP

~~~
rimliu
Are you going to build your own cell towers too?

~~~
RandomBacon
The top-level comment that was being replied to already specified "radio with
kill-switch"

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jstanley
This is a superb project, really nice work!

I kept thinking "oh nice, you'd just want to add a---" and you've already done
it! Incredible stuff. I can't wait to see how this progresses. The keyboard
design is really neat. It reminds me a lot of the old Nokia N900, still the
best phone I've ever owned.

Do you have any idea how much battery life you get?

~~~
marasal
I still miss my old Nokia E7 phone with qwerty keyboard.

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neilv
This is impressive work, and I would like to have this, or something like
this.

A question is whether the amount of clever effort that went into working
around constraints of the Pi Zero, would be enough to incorporate the Pi Zero
aspects of this assembly into a single board?

Also, maybe not even an exact Pi, but using a RISC-V core and fully open
firmware, even if less powerful at this time?

~~~
kokey
I actually do like the fact that it uses an existing Pi Zero board, even if
much creativity is needed to add so much functionality to it in a small space.
It reminds me of gopro cameras being taken apart and custom modules added to
make it lightweight to use on small drones. I think this is a developing
trend, leading to somewhat of an open source supply chain of creative
applications for hardware devices. I think we benefit of the economies of
scale of the Rpi boards already, just like we do from individual chips, so
these custom boards ties that together nicely.

------
kozak
I am puzzled why there are no widely available laptop-like cases for the
Raspberry Pi, especially considering that now there is a 8 GB version of it.
"pi‑top [3]" came close, but it was somewhat childish and apparently it's not
sold anymore.

~~~
dunnevens
Part of the problem is how thick the Pi's are. They're small computers on
their own. But in a laptop case, they're chunky. Much thicker than your
average off-the-shelf laptop. Plus, there's still rough edges when trying to
use them as desktops. The Pi Zero would work in terms of size, but is very
underpowered for desktops. The Pi Compute would probably be the perfect fit,
but that hasn't been updated in a rather long time. Also underpowered.

So I can see why there's not much of a market. The hobbyists are largely doing
something other than standard desktop use, and the people who need laptops
(even cheap ones) are better served with something off-the-shelf. The best bet
for the future are the handful of laptop-style docks coming out. Just plug
your phone or pi into one of the external ports and go.

~~~
kozak
I would be fine if it was bulkier than modern ultrabooks and more like the
old-school Toshiba Libretto. The added volume can be used for batteries,
overall sturdiness, as well as other creative uses.

P.S. I decided to try and goodle that topic again, and I found one that is
coming soon:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=24092182](https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=24092182)

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jcun4128
6:55 haha one pixel is a letter, the form factor is really cool I thought it
would just be a Pi inside but there is also a bigger board combining
functionalities.

I do have a inclination for "disposable" computing (old $50 Chromebooks using
i3-wm) though and mostly I notice it's the ram so yea i3-wm is a must. This is
cool it's full/has everything.

Needs more compute I think. I've started seeing small form factor builds like
this 6GB ram 4K capable cube thing for gaming using Atom processor. Oh Larkbox
it's called

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jascii
I'm a bit saddened by the lack of built in keyboard in this iteration. I see
the modular bit, but it kinda takes away from the "terminal in your pocket"
idea.

~~~
jamesgeck0
The sliding keyboard in the video is only like half a centimeter thick; plenty
of room in your pocket with for the unit and attached module.

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mschuster91
Now imagine this, just with the Compute Module in a version with proper
PCI-E... sigh.

~~~
cricalix
Well, supposedly[0] the next iteration of the CM will be based on the Pi 4
guts, and expose the PCIe capabilities. The maker of the hardware being
discussed also mentions that they might try the compute module (it probably
makes a lot of sense from the custom PCB side of life?).

0: [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-nvme-
support-...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-nvme-support-
coming)

~~~
mschuster91
Oh _finally_. That's good news especially for people who'd like to tinker with
advanced stuff requiring PCI-E chipsets who don't really have the nerve to
risk wrecking a hundreds of dollars worth of x86 mainboard/CPU...

~~~
p0llard
> tinker with advanced stuff requiring PCI-E chipsets

What sort of things are you talking about here, out of interest? The only way
you're going to wreck hardware is if you're attaching something completely
incompatible at the physical level (wrong levels, shorts, etc.); if you're
"tinkering" you almost certainly don't have the resources to bring up your own
PCIe PHY (there's pretty much no way to do this without custom silicon) so
presumably you have some preexisting hardware in mind?

If you just want to play around at the TLP level (for example by using the
hard PCIe core in a cheap Xilinx Series-7 chip) then this is all pretty safe:
(temporary) catastrophic system instability is one thing (I learned this the
hard way when I accidentally had my FPGA spamming MSIs every free cycle), but
real hardware damage is pretty tricky.

~~~
dfox
Gamers and crypto miners do various nasty things to PCIe cards in order to use
cheapest cable possible to extend it and actual hardware damage resulting from
that seems pretty minimal.

~~~
p0llard
When I said "incompatible at the physical level" I meant it in the OSI sense
of an issue at physical protocol level. An electrical specification mismatch
could easily cause hardware damage (but would be very hard to achieve unless
you were using your own PHY or literally connecting a power supply to the PCIe
lines).

> seems pretty minimal

Is there actually any at all? I can't really see how this could lead to any
damage.

------
rcarmo
This seems like a perfect use case for the 3A+ (which is quad-core and only
slightly larger than the Zero).

------
bildung
The form factor reminds me of the OQO and similar UMPCs from that era.

Edit: It even has the same sliding keyboard as the OQOs!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO)

------
NiceWayToDoIT
Very nice, I can imagine all sort of applications for this. How much is the
power usage?

------
shaan7
That keyboard reminds me of the Nokia N900 <3

------
uberneo
With that sliding keyboard it reminds me of Nokia N900. I still have one of
those .. might dust it off so !!

------
antupis
I would love pocket computer that I could use to programming when I don't have
access to laptop.

~~~
asddubs
i miss phones with slide out keyboards

~~~
CapricornNoble
I still have my Android G1/ HTC Dream. If I could get a phone with roughly the
same form factor, just a modern CPU/GPU/RAM/camera and bigger battery, I'd be
in heaven. Needs to run PostmarketOS or PineOS too.

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jamesfmilne
If he's making PCBs, why not base it on a compute module?

edit: He does indeed say he's contemplating this.

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grugagag
I wonder what the price range for this would be. I’d readily pay up to 300 but
would think twice if it goes above that.

im thinking that this device could be upgraded, modded, fixed, have full
control over the software, have privacy and last but not least: no planned
obsolesce

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yjftsjthsd-h
I wonder if that keyboard module could be reworked to attach to a pinephone;
obviously you'd have to replace the actual connection to switch from usb to
i2c, but otherwise it looks nearly drop-in.

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Kolians
I'd buy this.

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atum47
love your videos

