However, I was immediately curious about how the "dual battery" feature works. The IP5306 power-management IC seems to be designed only for a single battery, and as far as I can tell from the schematic[1], the two battery connectors are just directly connected to each other in parallel (across VBAT and GND).
This seems really sketchy. If you plug in two batteries that are not at the same state-of-charge, then you're going to get a very large current flowing from the higher-voltage battery to the lower-voltage one, probably significantly exceeding the batteries' rated current limits. At best this wastes a lot of power and generates a lot of heat, and at worst it could be a fire hazard.
I was going to launch into a lecture about how battery isolation is a Thing, very simple, etc and the author couldn't possibly be dumb enough to not isolate them with diodes, but then I looked at the schematic and yiiiiiiiikes, they're both just tied together, I think. There's a charge management IC and a MOSFET as part of the USB power input...and that's it.
I was sketched out by BSI not being connected to anything, but it seems it's a fixed resistance battery size/chemistry ID function, not a temperature sensor. That said, I don't see any over/under temperature protection except for some sort of vague temperature limit in the charge IC (which is not thermally coupled to the battery in any way, so only a general "the device is way too hot"), so hopefully that's in the battery - don't go buying any cheapo clones.
I also don't see any fusing, which is a huge no-no. A polyfuse is a twenty cent (ish) part. Again, an official battery would have an internal BMS circuit and prevent overcurrent events, but people are probably going to go for the almost-cheapest battery on Amazon/Ebay. Not to mention counterfeit problems even if you do try to get an OEM battery.
I agree, this is a pretty bad idea. I've used batteries in parallel many times, but it's always in the context of treating it as a single "bank" that is always charged at the same level, not as individual batteries which can be swapped separately. Swapping a full battery in when the other one is low is going to result in a rapid rebalance of power until they get to the same level!
You can think of it like having two big swimming pools side by side, slowly draining out into a little stream. If the two pools are at the same level and the wall between them disappeared, they're largely going to be fine and keep on going.
Now imagine one pool is nearly empty and the other is full. As soon as you disappear that wall in the middle, there's gonna be a very powerful wave as the water from the high pool rushes in to fill the empty pool.
It looks like two BL-5Cs, which normally come with their own overcurrent protection (AFAIK even the no-name generic clone cells do), so what's more likely to happen is you trip the protection on one of the cells being swapped. Fortunately these are not very high capacity nor current cells, being ~1000mAh at most. They seem to be pretty robust in general, as a series of hugely popular MP3/MP4 players that used them had nothing more than a diode from USB5V for charging.
On the other hand, I'll gripe about that "schematic" being not actually a schematic but just loose parts with labeled pins.
It has no solar panels , runs shorter than my cell phone on a single charge. It is thick. No ethernet socket
Any small UMPC is better than this thing. I don't mercifully mention the blobs encapsulated in the raspberry pi itself.
I understood it as it'll use only one of the batteries, but you can swap between which is used. So initially, you have two charged batteries, while using only one. Once you run out of power in the first one, you'll switch to the second, and now the first one could be swapped to a fully charged one. Blue/green deployments, but for batteries basically.
It would be convenient if it worked that way, but since the batteries are connected across each other in parallel, they will both be discharged simultaneously. And as soon as you hot-swap one of the nearly-discharged batteries for a charged one, it'll be more-or-less short circuited across its discharged counterpart.
To do what you describe, you would need additional components to "switch" one battery at a time into the power path. (This can be done with a single transistor if you're only worried about current flowing in one direction, but I believe it's trickier if you want to support both charging and discharging in the same circuit.)
>> A mid-stream capacitor is holding enough charge for 10 seconds to allow indivdual swapping out -- and also this is meant? to mean that you can swap TWO NEW batteries in without having to shutdown/sleep/power interrupt - thus the 10 seconds.... that dope
EDIT: I was imagining the capacitor holds up the whole thing for ten seconds to swap out both bats...
In theory you could do that, but it has its own costs and complications. And if you're going to add a big enough capacitor to ride out a battery swap, why bother with two batteries instead of just one?
Hotswap of two parallel batteries must replace both with a matched pair. Otherwise the one at higher state of charge starts charging others without current limit.
> Replace your battery in 10 seconds without killing the power!
as a suggestion that you'd have four batteries total, and you'd have two that're fully charged, and you'd replace one battery, and within seconds you'd replace the other. Or at least that's how I'd do it.
I've recently read up about power management and battery charging, and want to make a charge controller than can connect two separate banks. I wonder how hard it'd be to change the IP5306 in the Hackberry Pi Zero to handle the two batteries separately.
"Do things exactly right, quickly, or the device bursts into flames*" is not acceptable electronics design, even for something you intend to use yourself.
* do you really want to trust a generic battery's built-in protection IC?
Now that I'm aware, sure. If I wasn't told, I would assume that they were designed so that a new battery could be swapped in while one battery remained inserted to maintain power (much like an old Thinkpad I used to own).
If there's a capacitor... what about adding a switch to allow you to select which battery you are using? Then you can replace whatever you are not using without issue.
A mid-stream capacitor is holding enough charge for 10 seconds to allow indivdual swapping out -- and also this is meant? to mean that you can swap TWO NEW batteries in without having to shutdown/sleep/power interrupt - thus the 10 seconds.... that dope
acktually, traditionally, 'batteries' referred to two or more cells. This keeps with the etymology of the word as an emplacement of cannon or guns. If OP meant a single cell, they should have written 'cell', not the singular 'battery'.
There's no problem if you use one battery, and there should also be no problem if you use two batteries and charge/discharge them both simultaneously (because then the voltages are matched).
The problem shows up when you try to "hot-swap" just one of the batteries and replace it with one at a different state of charge, as the README claims you can do.
What is the expectation here about functionality? They are using some kind of COTS battery system to keep the cost down, but at the consequence of this safety qustion. Should these people expect any buyer to antipate this? Its not really a consumer product after all.
I think there is no shortage of battery management ICs, but the number that can arbitrate between external power/battery A/Battery B certainly eliminates 97% on your Digikey parametrics.
IMO my expectation is that they not do that. If they want to offer hot-swappable batteries, they should either do it right (with a more functional battery management IC or a little homebrewed FET-switching circuit), or they should at least come up with a hack that doesn't threaten the battery safety. For example, have a physical switch to select between the two batteries and instruct the user to flip it when one gets low. Use a super capacitor to cover the short time while the switch is between connections.
It feels to me that the fact that there are no readily available BMS chip that supports this type of circuit indicates something. But maybe I'm mistaken...
See I do have a use for this kind of thing, but not exactly. I have a few desktop towers and Raspberry Pi devices that sometimes due to upgrades or random acts of Zeus absolutely fail to boot up. I want some ability to connect a keyboard and a screen to these so I can see the actual boot screen. Normally for me this involves lugging the device to my office and connecting it to my office monitor and keyboard which is highly inconvenient given that some are in the attic. Instead I want a small screen and keyboard in one device I can hook up to an HDMI or VGA or mini HDMI or just a serial port + USB for keyboard. Something lightweight I can carry anywhere.
And no that doesn’t need its own computer but it might be nice to have one to be able to hook it up to the network and download and transfer files to the broken machine or be able to download and quickly boot off a rescue image or some such.
These are rare enough problems that I don’t actually bother building a device like that but every time they do happen I wish I did.
I too have this use case troubleshooting headless computers around the house. I saw an ad for https://www.aurga.com and bought one for $84. It connects to an app on my Android phone as display, keyboard, and mouse. Minor discussion 7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38609526
Long ago I bought a mini keyboard + mouse combo for input; the custom wireless USB dongle edition I have (strongly preferred over Bluetooth when troubleshooting) is no longer for sale. https://amzn.com/dp/B00I5SW8MC
This looks quite interesting, thanks for the link. It does seem to require a native viewer instead of having a web interface. I would really prefer just a website like the PiKVM. Might still get it.
I have to do an off-topic rant though. The marketing page you linked to does not really state what this device does. It has a nice look into the case and a lot of buzzwords, but nothing like a small section with "HDMI Input" or "USB keyboard emulation". Even the shop page is somewhat light on details, but it at least shows (in GIFs only) that it works as a display and has a USB port. If I wasn't given your comment as context, I would likely not have gotten the use case and closed the tab. Based on the form factor being similar to a Fire TV stick etc. I would have assumed you plug it into a Hotel TV or similar to work on that.
EDIT: Saw your edit now and I think it is kind of funny that the old HN thread is also mentioning the marketing.
If you don't want to spend a lot of money on this:
1) Get a Bluetooth adapter.
2) One of those cheap Chinese keyboard/mouse combinations like the one you linked (the are many more).
3) Get a cheap Chinese portable monitor with HDMI/USB-C.
4) Optionally, a powerbank for the monitor. Or get one with a battery.
You'll be done with a similar price as this 'Aurga'. Back in the Nokia days, you could use Nokia Linux device as a remote keyboard/monitor/mouse, too. So e.g. Nokia N800/Nokia N810 a better cyberdeck than a Sharp Zaurus.
I have that keyboard and gifted one to my parents. Our use case is the odd chance you need to input text or use a browser on a Smart TV. Works so much faster than the on screen keyboard. With many Smart TVs just being Android under the hood, it just works.
I find for server troubleshooting, I usually have no problem grabbing a random USB keyboard. The bigger problem is finding a screen at a convenient location and connecting that one. It often was easier to carry my server to the screen instead of the other way.
On the topic of niche input methods, I also have an "air mouse" [1] with a full keyboard on the back for my Kodi system or when connecting my desktop to the TV. I essentially never need to use it, but it has come in handy.
I have one of these and it's great for this sort of thing. The whole keyboard runs off one AA battery which lasts forever, and it even has a storage spot for the USB dongle.
Those combo devices are incredibly useful in a pinch -- I keep one in my backpack. I've used it countless times while working on interactive installations and also while messing around with Pis at home.
iPad + HDMI input dongle can be an HDMI monitor. iPad + GetConsole app + Redpark [1] USB-serial cable = serial console. The missing piece is USB keyboard emulation, but serial->arduino [2] might work.
iPad + $40 RISC-V piKVM-alike [3] is another option.
From what I understand, KVM setup is what is used. In the olden days it used to be a keyboard and monitor in every rack with a switch to connect to all the machines in the rack. Nowadays I’m sure it is more software than hardware but same principle. A home setup would be a laptop form factor device that can take in different video inputs and has a keyboard. A mouse wouldn’t even be required but I guess wouldn’t be hard to add. It would need a battery for the monitor but really would need no brains at all.
Another option would be a computer that can do video in and act as a USB HID for the keyboard/mouse but then allow you to connect to it via VNC. This really could be amazing if you could just plug in two cables and then go to your laptop to connect to it.
They make USB KVM devices. Run an application on your computer to send input / receive output. Then you can use whatever laptop you want. That said, I've only used them on Windows, so drivers might be an issue.
Yes, the pikvm (or nanokvm) devices are cheap KVM over IP and they take input from the HDMI output of the server/pc, so you see just the same as you would if you were stood in front of the physical monitor plugged into the HDMI. They also come with the motherboard connector so you can do a power-off/power-on remotely. You can change BIOS settings and even do a full OS install remotely.
I can confirm that getting a PiKVM has very much eliminated lugging around my server or a screen. Having some form of display input would be the one feature I would wish to add if given the choice. Not having HDMI-In, e.g. via capture card, makes sense in this form factor and power budget, but would make this an instant buy for me. I would really enjoy having a small, very portable device to debug things with.
I recently got linked to a CCTV tester [1] that at least handles the display part. Sadly it does not seem to have keyboard emulation. It might be possible to hack this in as this is an Android tablet at its core and the USB controller might support gadget mode.
My pet peeve with RasPi for these types of handheld projects is that they don't support suspend, and don't have a true poweroff state. Even in poweroff, they sit there consuming a bunch of current.
Beepy is a similar project that uses a RasPi Zero, and their approach is to cut power to the RasPi entirely with a management MCU. On my Beepy, I switched to a Radxa Zero instead and ported over any relevant kernel modules and device tree overlays, because it has an Amlogic SoC that actually supports suspend.
Am I right in assuming it's fairly straightforward swap hardware wise? Do you have any measurements of the difference in battery drain between the two? Is it a fairly recent kernel?
With that Sharp memory LCD and proper suspend that's potentially a gamechanger for the beepy. Any direction you can point me in appreciated.
Hey, sorry for the late response. I posted my notes here: https://github.com/Hylian/beepy-radxa-zero-notes. It's a straight swap hardware-wise, and for software, you just need to build/install the kernel modules and configure some kernel boot arguments.
Feel free to ask in the Discord if you have any questions.
Back in the day, the Nokia N770/N810/N900 line fit the bill for this perfectly. Its form factor was perfect for the "Linux terminal in your pocket" use case.
Might be something to look into for design inspiration.
I miss them so much. Even the N9, which lacked a physical keyboard, was so nice. A planned N9 variant with a sliding keyboard was never released once the series was discontinued.
It was so refreshing to have a mobile that acted as a regular Linux machine. You could copy files from your other computers normally just using scp.
Or tweak the GSM radio, as you would do with any other device, just using ifconfig.
Very similar to the Beepberry. Exciting to see someone else building into that form factor. Also love to fun to see the Nokia BL-5C battery (originally introduced in the Nokia 3650 in 2003) still alive and kicking 20years later.
That appears to have been renamed to the Beepy, and the product page now has the repurposed Blackberry keyboard blurred out. Did whoever owns the corpse of Blackberry go after them for trademark infringement?
It looks cool, but I've found the Steam Deck is the only portable computer that's versatile enough for me to actually use for all sorts of different stuff.
Anyone know if steam deck can act as a USB OTG keyboard?
I remember this being a cool feature of those GPD Pocket computers. It would be cool to hook something up to the USB and send keystrokes from the steam deck (not necessarily from the touchscreen keyboard, but by scripts).
>> Steam Deck is the only portable computer that's versatile...
Would you clarify your categorization?
I personally consider 'portable computer' to be any computer with an internal battery (including laptops etc). I don't find the Steam Deck especially versatile in that category.
A separate/sub-category for me would be 'pocketable computers' (like this Hackberry-Pi_Zero, the GPD Win mini etc) for which the Steam Deck would be unusually versatile—albeit the Steam Deck does NOT fit in any of my pants or jacket pockets.
I miss my Hiptop(s). Nothing has come close to that experience since. I could carry on 10 AIM conversations, IRC, and be doing browsing and email while typing at ~100 WPM.
Such computers are cool, but fat and inconvenient. I don't understand why decent companies like ibm, samsung or others won't make a Linux handheld seriously. With a good processor that will be power efficient and run for a long time on a single charge.
Terminal and ssh will suffice in many cases. People a lot of time used only terminal and live.
Isn't that what the PinePhone and Librem 5 are? They don't have an embedded physical keyboard and do have a touchscreen, so the physical features are slightly different, but otherwise they are still a mobile ARM linux computer.
The touchscreen is a big difference though. You need to run some kind of graphical environment to handle the touch input and then it's slow and you have a crappy keyboard. I love my pinephone, but even with sxmo I find it unresponsive and hard.to work on. The keyboard shell for the pinephone is good, but changes the form factor then.
I want my Blackberry back badly, and this project is giving me hope.
The case it a bit too big, there are still battery issues, and of course a 5G card + microphone + loudspeaker need to be added.
But perhaps the day will come that I can roll that wheel to view my emails again, use that excellent small keyboard to reply without having to touch glass.
I just built a portable enclosure with a charge controller, USB hub, ethernet and four 18650 batteries. While The Hackberry Pi Zero would've been a lot easier (assuming I'd've just bought one instead of making it myself), the only downside is the battery life. My application is for having a server that travels with me and is on 100% of the time, sometimes running on battery for hours at a time.
This, though, is so much smaller... It's definitely something to consider when they're shipping.
Edit: just read, "Main Processor: Only compaticable with Raspberry pi zero 2w." I wonder why it's not compatible with the original Zero. Is it just that the drivers and preinstalled OS are 64 bit? Even though the 2W is more performant per watt, it still takes more absolute power. Hmmm.
Nice! My next tiny machine may be a Radxa Zero 3E. A tiny form factor machine with ethernet is definitely appealing.
My current portable uses a Raspberry Pi Zero (not Zero 2). Lower overall power is much more important than performance, and for my use, 700 MHz single core and 512 megs of memory is more than I need. It has been a good project to learn about power controllers.
Does anyone really NEED anything? That'd be a tangent.
I want a portable server because I want my data to be in my physical possession. Also, I enjoy telling people I'm already doing the thing that they're telling me can't be done.
I'll write it up some time. Perhaps you'll see it here on ycombinator.
I have a vague idea of what my ideal Cyberdeck would be, no idea if there's anything like this already:
One of those super-wide small screens, 1920x720 or thereabouts, with the screen split into 2 terminals. Since I'm wishing, I'd also like that screen to have a 300 to 600ppi e-ink screen built in to a layer, so that when the colour screen is off, the e-ink is visible.
A PC, x86_64 or arm64, built into the screen, with lots of ports, IO, compatible with Pi hats/shields. For extra coolness, a pluggable system like Framework so if someone wants a real RS232 port, they can get one. With USB-C power so I can use any powerbank or other compatible power supply.
A Keychron lightweight Alice-style keyboard, folding a bonus, QMK mandatory, standard bluetooth and/or USB.
I've been wanting to build my own handheld ever since I picked up a 3d printer so the last few months I've been checking these builds out. The blackberry keyboard is my favorite part of the build, definitely going to do the same for mine. Looks great with the casing.
I am working on the same kind of thing. For me the ideal keybaord/screen combination was the Keyboard Featherwing from Adafruit https://www.adafruit.com/product/4818 . Unfortunately, it is a discontinued product. I managed to snag one of the last ones, but I am reluctant to use something that I cannot get any more of.
FYI, there was a board named Hackberry over 10 years ago not related to the Raspberries. It employed the Allwinner A10 CPU and had WiFi on board, which was not common back in the day. It however lacked any exposed GPIO which made it unsuitable for hardware hacking, but had good audio (much much better than the RPis available back then) and decent overall performance. I still have one somewhere and recall using it both as webradio receiver for music and with SDR dongles using rtl_tcp. Later, smaller and better boards such as the NanoPi M1 turned out more useful for remote SDR applications.
Wow this is amazing it’s the best cyber deck I have ever seen or would consider using. I wonder if you could get rid of one battery and shove in a 4g LTE modem connected to a usb port.
If that thing had VGA-in on top of the keyboard and mouse out via USB, it would be a great tool to carry in a data center when you have to physically interact with a machine.
> There is a red switch on the left side to decide if the keyboard controller communicates with the HackberryPi or with other device through the USBC-Port underneath.
OK, having it be able to function as an emergency USB keyboard is pretty cool, though I think I'd prefer emulation of a USB device so I could run a sequence of commands, inject usernames and passwords for logins, etc.
There is also the Tindie Null 2 kit - it's built around Rapsberry Pi Zero 2W. I picked one up several years ago and built a gameboy replacement of sorts. It was a lot of fun. Lots of soldering.
This form factor is so tempting. I’ve gotten close to pulling the trigger on the minimal phone like 5 times but just don’t know if I can actually reasonably switch from my iPhone and not end up annoyed with the change (https://www.minimalcompany.com/).
But a calm, keyboard oriented device just seems great.
I wish someone would make a 5" to 7" clamshell "laptop" that runs a Linux command line and lasts forever on an internal lithium (or replaceable AA) battery.
I want the retro feel of mini laptops back when GUIs were only on $20k UNIX workstations.
I have a MNT Pocket Reform on order just for this reason. I recently sold a Sony PGH (~2009 model) that still ran modern Debian just fine as I'm expecting to get my order soon. Edit: I also bought a broken HP 95LX so I could replace its innards with a RPi Zero 2w and a screen but I haven't made progress on that yet.
Looks super awesome.
I've been slowly working towards building pretty much the same thing, but haven't had enough time to finish.
I added myself to the wait list. Intend to purchase 3 if I'm able to. Getting everything into such a nice packet is very cool.
Amazing! How hard will it be to replace the screen to an eInk one similar to the beepberry/beepy? I love everything except the screen, and I assume eInk will be the perfect match considering the terminal and power consumption.
Pins are still pretty handy though. Tangential to the OPs use case, but I use my Zero 2 as a debug probe (with openocd) for few MCUs (mostly Pi Pico), and it comes out $$$ cheaper than JLink’s official one and analogs
I wonder why the two switch system was necessary. Would an auto switch when an external keyboard is plugged in require something that would drain resources like a hardware listener?
Are there any compact 4G/5G boards which can be plugged into this for outside connectivity? Last I looked, these breakout boards were far too cumbersome.
I think connectivity would be a key challenge for this device. RPI zero2W only has WiFi4 == 802.11b/g/n. In a modern crowded building, 2.4GHz is often super crammed and busy, and I find wifi4 barely works. Lots of dropped packets, sometimes full seconds of latency.
The GPIO port is accessible under the back cover so I could easily see add-on modules that could piggyback on. Design a small backpack to use the existing latch, add some tiny pogo pins and the module could be easily swapped out. A lorawan transceiver and a GPS receiver would be an excellent pair.
I wasn't expecting to see buy now links, so I wasn't too disappointed when I did see them but found they both say out of stock - was completely ready to impulse buy the BB Q20 keyboard version (or either, really!) and hope that having registered to hear it more being sold I'll be able to get one.
I'd almost be tempted to try to put one together myself, but it's not something I'd find particularly easy and there's other stuff I'd rather spend time on. But might be tempted...
Yep thanks, I'm indeed hoping to take advantage of that!
But I have a sneaking suspicion it won't be a big enough quantity to satisfy even the people who've seen this HN submission so may well come down to what time of day / how quickly I see the email
Both models say "Sold out since Aug 02". If all the existing stock was bought by HN readers today, then 1-2 weeks isn't bad for the next batch, and today's waitlist can influence batch size. There seem to be lots of BB keyboards on Amazon, so hopefully the constraint is funding and manufacturing, not components. Lots of demand from HN can only help with funding!
I saw this thread almost immediately after it was posted and both versions were already out of stock when I got to those pages minutes later, so my assumption was that there either were very few devices (just a couple of PoCs) or that sales had come from somewhere other than HN, either way leaving the majority of people who want to buy it from seeing this thread on the waiting list with me.
Though maybe I'm wrong about how popular it will be, and actually only the handful of people who've explicitly commented about wanting to buy it, like me, will have joined the waiting list and some may then decide not to buy it having slept on it - but it's definitely possible that lots of people are looking forward to getting one or more!)
I also assumed that it was a fairly DYI project done by a single founder (DYI as in him making them himself one by one, rather than having either a team or an outsourced factory ready to scale up to meet whatever demand is on the waiting list), but again I may be guessing wrong (or may have forgotten something they wrote that shows I'm wrong), but it's a few hours past my bedtime so I'll just hope that when I wake up they might have replied to my message asking if I could reserve one rather than spend more time guessing about their production capacity :D )
That’s my thoughts as well. I ordered a uConsole from clockworkPI, long waitlist there. This is tempting me again. I feel this may have even better ergonomic qualitty for my personal taste and appeara more portable.
Every time I see a little game/dev device with a square screen I think about pico-8.
The devterm looks like it could be a good device too as you could have pico-8 running on one side with code editor taking up the rest of the screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XC5lC9nGWM
Sorry to hear. How many months after you ordered it did you actually receive it? Im taking a gamble on this but wasn’t aware they do no testing before shipping.
I'm quite enamoured by the uConsole [0] .. I've had it for a few weeks and find myself reaching for it more and more, having set it up with the close family/friends Discord channels .. its nice having a machine just for the task, kind of thing. It would be so nice for a few more of my friends/family to have such little things, and leave the world of third-party-based social communication well and truly behind ..
Surely, somewhere out there, someone has a small fleet of these cyberdecks, connected with tunnels, doing nicely secure communication ..
However, I was immediately curious about how the "dual battery" feature works. The IP5306 power-management IC seems to be designed only for a single battery, and as far as I can tell from the schematic[1], the two battery connectors are just directly connected to each other in parallel (across VBAT and GND).
This seems really sketchy. If you plug in two batteries that are not at the same state-of-charge, then you're going to get a very large current flowing from the higher-voltage battery to the lower-voltage one, probably significantly exceeding the batteries' rated current limits. At best this wastes a lot of power and generates a lot of heat, and at worst it could be a fire hazard.
[1]: https://github.com/ZitaoTech/Hackberry-Pi_Zero/blob/main/Sch...