When I set out to make a cyberdeck, my goal wasn’t just a prop—I wanted something I could conceivably use as a daily driver. At the same time, I had the idea to build a “dock”-style cyberdeck around a phone or a tablet; why start carrying a secondary device when I already carry a way more powerful computer around all the time anyway? The problem with the former was that most SBCs weren’t fast enough to be usable as a daily driver, while the latter was hindered by those devices being locked down too tightly to do anything useful. It seemed like I’d have to make a choice between power and freedom.

DUET allows me to have both. I use the iPad as the primary computing device, for web browsing and schoolwork. When I need something that iPadOS doesn’t allow, I can remote into the Pi and run it on that. Communication between the two happens via a USB-C cable, with the Pi presenting itself as a USB gadget with a network interface that the iPad can SSH through. That core concept for DUET came when I saw someone using a Raspberry Pi as a VS Code server to do software development on an iPad. That gave me the knowledge that such communication was possible, and I set out to see how far that concept could go?
One could ask why I didn’t use say, a LattePanda or a Framework motherboard to provide the power I need. The answer is very simple: “Science isn’t about ‘why’—it’s about ‘Why Not?’” I liked the idea of a docking station cyberdeck, and I wanted to expand on that idea. Also, I didn’t have any of those, and being a broke college student I thought I’d see what I could put together primarily from components I already had.