• And so it begins...​

    Taylor Hay • 04/12/2024 at 06:43 • 0 comments

    This has actually been a long time coming! I built a CinePi cinema camera last year, and although it's great - I dont actually need / enjoy working with cinema footage... so I decided to use the incredible Hyperpixel screen, and the best Pi in my collection (Pi 4, 8gb) to make a handheld Linux PC. Excellent for portable Pen Testing with Kali, or doing anything! Mainly though, I just think it's cool.

    The keyboard has always been what's held me back though. I was going to design a PCB with a heap of tactile buttons, kinda like in the Armachat devices - but they dont look nice to type on, and it still leaves the question of a mouse open.

    When I saw this Blackberry breakout keyboard with a mouse built in - I knew it was destiny! I ordered one, and grabbed the STL files from ZitaoTech's Github, reverse engineered them into a solid body (best Fusion 360 feature ever...) and then designed a case that holds the Pi and the Hyperpixel screen.

    I should be able to transfer the keyboard into my new frontplate, and use the original backplate. Hoping that I can use it as a USB device without the battery.

    A chopped USB cable soldered directly to the USB pins on the pi will take care of connectivity - and that's my mouse and keyboard sorted! 

    https://www.tindie.com/products/zitaotech/blackberry-q10-bleusb-keyboard/

    The case is still very much a work in progress, but a large 10,000mah pouch lipo will be integrated into the back part of the case.

    It will be a bit thick - but I love the idea of lots of battery life... I'm using the power bank's button to power it on an off, and I'll reroute the power bank battery % display somewhere to keep an eye on that. I could possibly integrate it with software, but that seems hard. And a physical battery display visible from the outside (similar to early MacBook Pro's that had that little button) will be cooooool!

    The bottom case of the keyboard is the original mesh here, while the top part is integrated into the rest of the case

    Once the case is finalised, I'll aim to machine parts from aluminium and print parts via HP Multijet Fusion from PCBWay (similar to my Cyberpunk Baofeng Radio project)

    Just waiting for the Keyboard to arrive, and I'll post an update when it's more assembled!