Close
0%
0%

North American Cyberarms Cyberdeck

Cyberdeck from an old pistol case for the 2023 contest

Similar projects worth following
My entry to the 2023 cyberdeck contest under the "ROM Construct" category. based on a pistol case for the case, a raspberry pi 3 and a keyboard that is the unholy union of half qwerty and butter stick.

Goals: A handy, sturdy, throw in a pack and go for a walk tool for writing, coding and some simple gaming. Maximum budget (because the cybperpunk dystopia we live in is more interested in shareholder value than employee quality of life) is 50 bucks. Thankfully I've got a decent sized junk bin.

halfbutterqmk.tar.bz2

qmk source files for the keyboard

x-bzip - 0 bytes - 08/16/2023 at 03:24

Download

CaseBottom - BottomPlate.stl

Bottom half, slots for keyboard, mouse and wires

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 7.82 MB - 08/16/2023 at 03:22

Download

CaseTop - Top beizel.stl

Top half, cutout for screen, blinkenlights and protoboard

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 3.21 MB - 08/16/2023 at 03:22

Download

Keyboard - Ergo Plate.stl

Ergonomic version of the keyboard plate

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 819.22 kB - 08/16/2023 at 03:22

Download

Keyboard - Ergo Case.stl

Case for the ergonomic keyboard

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 1.34 MB - 08/16/2023 at 03:22

Download

View all 10 files

  • 1 × raspberry pi or equivalent
  • 10 × cherry mx compatible keys, lighter is better
  • 1 × 5 way rocker switch
  • 1 × 3d printed keyboard plate
  • 15 × small diodes

View all 19 components

  • Got a deck!

    Patrick Tait08/13/2023 at 20:16 0 comments

    As finished as any cyberdeck project can be, just need to do some documentation and the project video


    As a bonus, blinkenlights, and my sons opinion on the case

  • Fitting the power in

    Patrick Tait08/08/2023 at 03:44 0 comments

    the PiJuice, short of a basic power brick, is the quickest and easiest way way to add power to a Pi Project.  It's plug and play, snap it on the top and you have power.  Add some software and you have fancy battery monitoring and control.  It has nifty features like programmable LEDs and buttons.  It has two notable downsides: 2.5 amp limit, which shouldn't be a problem for my project, and hat format means it adds a decent amount of vertical clearance to the Pi. it's a thicc board.

    A large pair of pliers and a quick twist later:

    and then we just snip those bits off -

    and I flew too close to the sun and cracked my flush cutters

    If that is god telling me I should have gotten a power board that fit instead of forcing in what I had, god should have made staying under budget easier on this project.  New flush cutter coming tomorrow, but I'll be able to fit all three boards,  LCD driver (blue) power (red) and pi (green)

    since I want to use the power feature, I have to make sure the I²C pins connect, so when I do trim the top parts off, going to want to keep the 5v, gnd and 3 and 5 pins intact to plug in. 


  • power plug

    Patrick Tait08/07/2023 at 23:27 0 comments

    Added a power plug and a reset switch.  Debated making the plug flush but with it sticking out a bit it looks like a one eyed duck and that amuses me

  • starting to look like a deck

    Patrick Tait08/04/2023 at 20:43 0 comments


    Sadly I have to use a different mouse, the relacon is too thick to fit, but I found a pocket mouse I can substitute. 

  • Work on the top plate

    Patrick Tait08/01/2023 at 22:06 0 comments

    Now that i have the screen in hand and can get an idea of exactly where everything goes, it's time to work on the top plate. 

    Had a few prototyping blocks around, so will be using those to access 5V, 35 and ground on the fat block and various to be determined and hopefully swappable lines on the skinny one, hole on the bottom right is for the USB hub, and the big hole in the top left is for the headphone jack, little holes below the monitors are for LED's

    Rev 1 didn't have the depth to fit the raspberry pi, rev 2 is on the printer right now:


  • Parts arrived

    Patrick Tait07/31/2023 at 21:55 0 comments

    Screen and new pi showed up, pretty soon we'll start having a minimum viable deck

  • measure twice, print once

    Patrick Tait07/31/2023 at 02:44 0 comments

    test print on the bottom half of the deck, which is designed to hold the keyboard, mouse and a videogame controller.  The keyboard case was the wrong size and the whole thing was about a cenimeter too short.  Remeasure, reprint and move on.  

    width was due to me accidentally not replacing the default with the proper variable, keyboard outline was due to using the wrong revision of the keyboard,  Onshape is handy but not being able to integrate it into my normal version control is a headache

  • rpi not booting, battery extraction

    Patrick Tait07/29/2023 at 23:10 0 comments

    waiting on a USB ttl cable so I can check and see if there is anything on the boot log, if I have to get a new pi that would more than double the budge of the build, bah.  

    Pulled some batteries out of my laptop that died previously in the project:



  • International Keyboards

    Patrick Tait07/20/2023 at 21:55 0 comments

    Here's a first draft layout for a french azerty keyboard, there are more extra characters than I would assume and I'm making some guess at how useful they are but it's not the worse start

  • Fixed computer, making progress, waiting on diodes and the screen

    Patrick Tait07/20/2023 at 02:13 0 comments

    Same keyboard, different hand sizes. 

View all 18 project logs

Enjoy this project?

Share

Discussions

Similar Projects

Does this project spark your interest?

Become a member to follow this project and never miss any updates