
Raspberry Pi 3B+ Hackable Linux Handheld - mmerlin
http://yarh.io/yarh-io-mki.html
======
james412
A veritable steal at only $629.99, truly emphasizing the philosophy of the
Raspberry Pi project. I'd seriously consider this in favour of my next real
estate purchase

~~~
geek_at
even though it's canadian $ it seems highly overpriced. A raspberry pi of the
last generation for almost double the price of the current gen (36$)?

And 3d printing 340$.. did the author mean buying the 3D printer too? Because
I'm sure if you have a friend who has a printer they can print it for 10$ and
they make a 8$ profit with that.

------
Abishek_Muthian
I recently found this project and I'm very excited about this DIY portable
Linux computer trend and hope some of them graduate to mainstream. N-O-D-E
recently announced one [1] and there is another RPi zero based phone project
on Crowd Supply[2].

The reason I want a portable Linux handheld computer is, because the direction
in which smartphones are moving towards is frightening to say the least.
Smartphones are essentially mobile computers and for many parts of the world
the first computing experience. COVID-19 situation has shown how mobile
computing has been taken for granted and misery of those who have no access to
it[3].

Can we imagine a computer manufacturer selling $2000 computer which will
receive security updates for only 3 years _if lucky_ , can't install alternate
operating systems or software of our choice? Then why are we providing
smartphone manufacturers with such privileges? With that unfair advantage they
are dictating mobile computing for the entire world. I'm afraid it's just a
matter of time, when this trend scale up and affects overall computing in
general.

[1][https://n-o-d-e.net/zeroterminal3.html](https://n-o-
d-e.net/zeroterminal3.html)

[2][https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone](https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone)

[3][https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-
underp...](https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-
underprivileged-education-poverty)

~~~
1vuio0pswjnm7
"... can't install alternate operating systems or software of our choice."

That choice should include more than just "Linux".

Many, nearly all "Raspberry Pi competitors", fail to offer that choice.

Consider this one from a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24378758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24378758)

For me, the single most attractive aspect of the RPi was booting from SD card,
no user data or user programs stored on the "device" (computer). Hence, I can
run Linux, and/or BSD, and/or Plan9, etc. I can have a selection of different
SD cards, each with a different OS. This is how I built systems for myself
before RPi. Boot from USB, everything running in RAM, nothing necessary stored
on HDD.

However, when RPi alternatives are "advertised" and discussed on HN, the focus
usually is solely on (non-bootloader) specifications and price. The option to
run multiple OS is seemingly not a concern for any commenter and not a
"target" in the manufacturer's marketing.

The best computers for me have been development boards. The reason for this is
simple. In most cases they are less biased toward one OS, namely Linux. I
probably would feel differently if Linux was favourite OS and had _no desire
to run anything else_. However, I do desire to run other OS, in addition to
Linux. Need to have that choice.

This "bias toward less choice" does not stop at the OS-level. Often I see bias
toward certain high-level programming languages. This includes the example
above from a few days ago. "WebAssembly and Javascript."

When the RPi was first announced there was mention of "running Linux" and was
suggested the device would geared toward Python programming. I feared the
worst. Thankfully, things turned out differently.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
The _funny_ thing with the RPIs is that whatever you install on it, is running
in a hypervisor on
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX)
which is now owned by Microsoft...

~~~
1vuio0pswjnm7
[https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-
rasp...](https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-raspberry-
pi/)

Companies like Microsoft have so much cash, they will constantly be poisoning
the well of software freedom destroying the last remnants of privacy, long
after their own business models became obsolete or out of fashion. I fully
expect Google and Facebook will pose the same issue long into the future.
Their models too will see their sun set, but they will still work to have
their fingers in our pies (no pun intended).

------
joezydeco
_It is a ruggedly designed..._

I get flashbacks to the college intern I interviewed that excitedly told me
about the RPi telemetry design he created for a rocket. Got it all coded up
and working great.

After some prodding he confessed that it failed on launch. The micro SD
connector couldn’t take the vibration.

~~~
dTal
That's odd - I've flown RPis on drones with far more vibration than the
relatively smooth linear acceleration of a model rocket. In such setups it's
recommended to directly solder power and USB connections, but I've never heard
anything about the microSD connector. Did he say how he diagnosed the failure?

~~~
DJBunnies
Maybe it was mounted poorly and the g force ejected it?

~~~
elcritch
A little lock tight would probably solve the problem too.

------
neilv
I started to build a "compact" handheld RasPi 3B+, but the driver situation
for all the shield-like display assemblies I could find (including the
promising-looking one I gambled on buying) was very poor. The best I could
find was "download our special build of Raspbian", which is a showstopper for
my priorities.

If there shield-like RasPi touchscreen open source drivers, mainlined in
Linux, and also included in Raspbian and Debian, I'd like to hear of it.

(Blob-free would also be nice, though the RasPi itself has blob problems, so
isn't as good as it could be for open source.)

~~~
jdc
How long ago did you try? I think Adafruit's PiTFT should work fine for most
use cases.

EDIT:

if you want to have a look at the installer script it's here:
[https://github.com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-
Scripts/b...](https://github.com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-
Scripts/blob/master/adafruit-pitft.sh) (the business end starts at line 222)

------
fnord77
I would love to make one of these with a full-size keyboard, without the touch
and without the GUI. Just a term. Think tandy model 100.

> 3D printing, filaments, etc. 340.00

Is this just for the cost of the raw printstock? Or does it include the price
of a low-end printer?

~~~
Ninjinka
I've been looking into something like this, and it seems the display is the
hardest part. I haven't been able to find a large monochrome LCD that is
compatible. Now if you don't care if the screen uses a lot of power, is color,
etc. then there are a lot of options similar to what you're describing on
reddit.com/r/cyberDeck

~~~
wanderingjew
You can do it for ~$30-40. There are two problems: The screen, and the
microcontroller. For the screen, you can just use a regular TFT, and only
display one color. This has the benefit of bringing down the size of the frame
buffer down from 800x480x8 or 16 to 800x480x1. That's still a lot of RAM for a
microcontroller, but you can get displays with onboard graphics RAM, and any
small microcontroller can use the on-board GRAM as a framebuffer. Line
scrolling is a bit of a trip (kind of like a bubble sort, but on lines of
pixels), and blinking the cursor is _weird_, but yeah, it can be done on a $1
microcontroller and a $5 screen.

Anyway, here's what I'm working on:
[https://twitter.com/MrRobotBadge/status/1274490808616419328](https://twitter.com/MrRobotBadge/status/1274490808616419328)

It's based on the VT-100. It's got a 69 key keyboard. The name VT-420 was
already taken, so it's called the VT-69.

~~~
jdsully
Blinking used to be accomplished by XORing the pixels with '1'. The nice thing
is it doesn't use any memory to restore it since you just XOR a second time to
get what you had back.

------
anthk
I would love a non-RPI based ARM palmtop with Linux or BSD. No, Gemini is too
expensive.

A device with a monochrome screen, 800x480 resolution, 3D case with a qwerty
keyboard shoudn't exceed $100.

They day a little netbook/palmtop arrives with Linux at a ridiculous price
(the one of an RPI), it would be almost a second revolution as the zaurus.

Portable Nethack/IF/SSH/IRC/Usenet + coding, PDF/image/video viewer with
framebuffer support, cheap audio from a SOC if any.

That would be my dream device.

~~~
fit2rule
Pyra Handheld? Open Pandora?

[http://pyra-handheld.com](http://pyra-handheld.com)

[https://openpandora.org](https://openpandora.org)

Disclaimer: I love my OpenPandora!

~~~
anthk
Too expensive. Even more today where devices much more powerful than the
Pandora can be fetched by $20 without a screen/keyboard.

------
ppf
I bought one of those mini keyboard/trackpad things for my own battery powered
rpi project. It sucked.

~~~
jhbadger
Yes, that's the downfall on all of these sort of things. Nobody seems to make
a good mini keyboard these days. Back in the late 1980s there was the Poqet PC
and it had a very nice typable keyboard. I don't know why we can't have
something similar in terms of small keyboards, but as far as I can tell,
nobody makes a keyboard like that now.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC)

------
rockyj
Inspired by things like these, I bought a 5" LED display for my RPI. The idea
was to display the time / weather on Chromium in a "kiosk mode". I was however
surprised that with the latest install of Raspbian OS it was even hard to open
a simple webpage on Chromium. It was just too slow. I would really avoid
buying / building anything on a RPI from now.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
That's Chromium on ARM under pure Linux, not necessarily an isolated RPi
issue. I've found both Chromium and Firefox to be unusable on even Jetson with
Nvidia graphics but a similar specced fan-less x86-64 Chromebook handles
browsing with ease as Google has done a fantastic job in optimising ChromeOS.
So browsing experience on ARM SBCs have left more to be desired largely due to
lack of memory.

Can anyone share their browsing experience on 8GB RPi?

~~~
nbernard
I'm using Firefox on a 4GB RPi4 daily, without problem (with uMatrix that
disables unneeded scripts however). It is a bit slow on media-heavy sites
(youtube, ...).

It tried the same software configuration previously on a RPi 3B+ (1GB): there,
Firefox was quickly exhausting the RAM.

------
mywittyname
I love the idea of this, but some time definitely needs to be invested in
reducing costs. $340 for a plastic housing and some screws? That's ludicrous.

I bet you could CNC some injection molds the cost of 2-3 of these chassis. If
someone could do that and sell the housing for ~$30 each, this would be an
impressive piece of kit.

~~~
GordonS
$340 is more than the cost of the rest of the BOM, and it feels kind of crazy
that the plastic housing would cost more than the electronics.

I get that the parts are 3D printed, but are they being printed on-demand or
something? I wonder if the 3D printing files have been open sourced - would be
interesting to hear from a 3D printing enthusiast here about the costs (it's
HN, there's bound to be many!).

~~~
iso1631
stl files are linked in a zip at the bottom. I've never touched a 3D printer
before so I don't know what you do with them, the online 2d printers I see
want me to create an account to generate a quote which seems tedious.

~~~
rcar
STL files are the 3D models that you put into your slicer of choice (which
converts the project into the thin layers that the printer will gradually put
down).

There's a dozen things to print in the zip. I sliced 3-4 of them, and none
seemed particularly heavy. Something like $0.50 of filament each for what I
pay for PLA, which would put the whole thing at ~$6 of material. Perhaps the
cost is being driven by some sort of print-on-demand costs?

FWIW, you could also buy an Ender 3 for ~$200, and $140 buys a lot of
filament, so you could get into the 3D printing hobby for less than the quoted
cost.

------
teleforce
It looks like a solid shell for RPi, it's just a shame that the price is a bit
on the high side though.

For an alternative hackable laptop like shell for RPi, consider the CrowPi2
[1]. It does not support touchscreen but the screen estate is much bigger
(11.6") and can be configured with many sensors for testing and developing IoT
based projects. As an added bonus the price is quite affordable for students
and hobbyists. The review of CrowPi2 can be found here [2].

[1] [http://linuxgizmos.com/hackable-crowpi2-steam-education-
lapt...](http://linuxgizmos.com/hackable-crowpi2-steam-education-laptop-
available-with-8gb-raspberry-pi/)

[2] [https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/crowpi2-review-
raspbe...](https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/crowpi2-review-raspberry-pi-
laptop-and-learning-kit)

------
curioussavage
Regardless of what it costs to make at this price or really any I don't see
the appeal. I used to get excited about similar projects but with how good my
2 pine phones are already and the pinetab that is getting delivered Thursday I
already have functional sleek linux handheld devices with additional
inputs/outputs.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I guess I don’t see the appeal either, mostly because an 800x480 display seems
painful.

Getting either a Pine phone or Pine tablet sounds better. Do the Pine phones
make sense just as Linux devices, not using them as a phone?

I always travel with a small iPad Pro, and with Mosh, tmux, and a really
powerful VPS from hetzner (which is so cheap I always leave it running), I
feel I always have a Linux system with me that makes a practical writing and
programming platform.

Can the Pine phones be plugged into a large monitor?

------
atum47
I thought about doing something like this. But I eventually went with
modularization. I 3D print for my raspberry, another one for my 7' touchscreen
and got myself a wireless keyboard / mouse. This way I can use each element
separate. For instance, sometimes I use my PI as a server, so I don't need a
screen or keyboard. I found myself wanting the screen decoupled from the
computer as well, cause it can be used with other devices. Heck, I even played
xbox on it once (not so great experience). Here's my setup if anyone's
interested:

    
    
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F88CSWH8SEY
    

In this video, I'm using the PI as a retro game machine (I can swap the card
to boot to other system)

------
abraxas
I want to build something similar but with bare metal Lua as an educational
computer for kids. For all of the STEM toys on the market none have the magic
of a 8 bit machine that boots to Basic. Except in this day and age Basic
should be replaced with Lua.

~~~
tyingq
This ESP32 device already has keyboard and VGA ports on it. Though you'd have
to port or bridge the existing JS vga library to Lua. And, it's $11.
[https://www.tindie.com/products/ttgo/lilygor-ttgo-
vga32_v14-...](https://www.tindie.com/products/ttgo/lilygor-ttgo-
vga32_v14-controller/)

~~~
abraxas
Looks interesting except for the ps2 keyboard and mouse ports. I'll take a
closer look though.

~~~
tyingq
I believe USB host support is coming for ESP32, just not done yet.

------
mschuster91
Side question: why does just about every RPi display use HDMI and not the DSI
port?

~~~
Uehreka
A guess (based on my experience with RPi): It’s handy if you can debug your
RPi peripherals using a “normal” computer to make sure they work. You can even
develop an application on a desktop with a fast CPU (for faster compilation)
and then ship it to the RPi when you’re done.

------
tudorizer
So many people complaining about the price have obviously never tried to build
something similar and sell it. Why do you all expect free designs and then
complain about big companies being unenthical?

------
x775
This is super neat, but jeez the pricing is insane.

How can the 3D printing be that much?

~~~
tudorizer
I assume a person or small team is trying to make up for the time spent
desiging this?

You can't just add up all the components, add 10% on top and expect a price
level that competes with Apple. Looks like a hobby project to me and there is
no harm in supporting the creator.

------
srtjstjsj
What's with that desktop?

Is there no touchscreen / smallscreen friendly Linux desktop shell?

------
_def
They mention PLA, ASA and ABC filament. Never heard of ABC, do they mean ABS?

------
iso1631
Half the price is the 3d printing. Looks great though

------
rootsudo
is there any difference from a cutiepie or raspad?

$629? As someone else stated, ouch.

