Build a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer in a Pelican case | Hacker News Reader

Build a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer in a Pelican case

southernfriedscience.com

72 pointsbeamatronic39 comments

For about the same price, you can get a used Panasonic Toughbook on eBay.[1] Those are rugged even with the cover open, and faster than a BeagleBoard.

I've been buying EeePC 1001px machines on eBay for under $40 for some semi-embedded work. I put Xubuntu on them, and they get the job done. If they break, I'm out $40.

If you're going to build stuff for outdoor use, coat the electronics with a waterproof silicon conformal coat.[2] (Mask the connectors first.) This will prevent corrosion on the coated parts. Automotive and marine electronics usually get this treatment at the factory, but, annoyingly, mobile devices usually don't.

[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-ToughBook-CF-30-MK3-Rugged...

[2] https://www.techspray.com/d-3-fine-l-kote.aspx

Toughbooks are awesome. I've used several CF-19s over the years for geologic mapping, and they're excellent though a little heavy. The rubberized keyboard kind of sucks and the one I have now has a backlit keyboard which is great for working in the tent at night, but could be a point of failure if you use it in heavy rain.

The integrated GPS receivers are quite nice for mapping as well as navigation. It's cool having the geologic map open in QGIS with the little arrow showing you where you are as you drive. If, you know, you're in to that sort of thing.

I dislike these type of replies. Read this:

"So I tapped into the wealth of Maker experience I’ve accumulated over the last few years and build a new one, using a single board computer, some extra peripherals, and a 3D printer. And I shoved the whole thing into a Pelican case. Say hello to the BeagleBox, a dirt cheap, tough-as-nails field computer for about $200."

Anybody can get a mass produced piece of equipment if they spend money. Not everyone can re-purpose cases, then hardware and convert it into a usable device, that is cheap, hackable and fit for purpose. I have to read this article again.

I appreciate Animats' comment, and it's on topic. I recently saw someone using a Toughbook but didn't have time to stop and ask about it.

And like you say, not everyone can re-purposes cases and hack and convert things. So it's nice to see "if you're into this, you might also like to know about ..." comments.

It's fine to build a tool for the sake of building, but if you want to present it as effort-saving you need to compare it to what you can buy if you know where to look.

"but if you want to present it as effort-saving you need to compare it to what you can buy if you know where to look."

wrong metric(s), cost-saving & (hack-ability).

The core of this is a $60 system. It does not save money over a $40 laptop that you could put in the same waterproof box.

And what does 'hack-ability' mean in this context? It's not easier to replace any parts on the beaglebone. Swapping the screen is easier; nothing else.

If I were funding a science expedition, I think I would prefer that people use an off-the-shelf item, even if it's a little bit more, than spending time hacking something together. In grad school, a labmate of mine pointed out that supporting a junior researcher costs ~$200/day (with tuition, stipend, and benefits), so if spending $200 on an experiment or piece of equipment would save a day of work, it's usually worth it. I'm not saying it's not useful to have people who can do the hacking, but you want them to spend their time hacking things that can only be hacked.

> you can get a used Panasonic Toughbook

Indeed one could, but then it wouldn't be upgradeable. The BeagleBox needn't be Beagle powered forever.

> coat the electronics with a waterproof silicon conformal coat.[2] (Mask the connectors first.)

Thank you very much for this recommendation and link. My own custom portable computing project [0] has certain aspirations to all-terrain viability, but I hadn't yet investigated water proofing.

[0] https://github.com/jpt4/cots

[2] https://www.techspray.com/d-3-fine-l-kote.aspx

Pshaw, Toughbooks. Real men use Dolch. (A friend had green screen version of one of these that came from Israel. He wrote his essays on it.)

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/32672/Dolch-PAC-486/

As for the build like this, there is always the option to throw in a lot of modular battery capacity. With waterproofing it would be great for outside long running no grid projects.

I would like to see a reasonably fast machine that has a really great keyboard, which is lightweight yet incredibly tough. Basically take the insides of an ultrabook, but put them in a case that exploits the additional thickness for super-enhanced durability without added weight. Take an ultrabook but tradeoff thickness for durability.

I have a backpack. I can take a thicker laptop. Give me one that's 10x more robust!

Out of curiosity, how thick of a machine would you be willing to accept? The Toughbooks are around two inches deep and still require professional laptop industry component packing knowledge to fit everything, but doubling that dimension yields lots of DIY flexibility, and Pelican makes cases of many sizes.

Also, what kind of keyboard would you prefer? I havebecome increasingly enamored with 60%, 50%, and even 40% mechanical keyboard kits, which I suspect would be easier to make robust (such as silicone-waterproofing the contacts, as per Animats suggestion above) than retrofitting an assembled full sized (104 key) keyboard.

Out of curiosity, how thick of a machine would you be willing to accept?

1" with well rounded corners.

Getac makes some higher end laptops like this. The red backlit keyboard is great in low light.

They're okay, but the keyboards are not great and you can kill them in outdoor industrial contexts. Those flimsy port doors will snap off and any flying particulates will bring it down eventually.

Have you seen the Toughbook 54?

I avoid loyalty to any particular brand, but Pelican makes incredibly durable cases that are unrivaled by anything I (and many anecdotal others) have seen. If you really need to protect something, they are worth the money.

In my experience, things that leave pelican cases in smoking ruins were unable to destroy zero halliburton products. I was sufficiently impressed that I switched luggage brands.

Zero halliburton camera cases that can be used for this project start at about 400$ a small Pelican camera case is 50-60$....

Zero halliburton makes very nice (looking) primarily aluminum cases but they are not waterproof (IIRC ZH makes no waterproof luggage unlike Samsonite for example).

If you are designing your DYI rugged laptop around a ZH attache case you might as well buy a Panasonic ToughBook it would probably be cheaper than the case.

So I really don't know what james bond style activities you perform that left a Pelican case a smoking rubble but you don't want to compare a designer brand that sells Iphone cases for 100$ and laptop messenger bags for 300$ to a tool company like Pelican.

If you're worried about water, pelican tests their cases to be IP57, IP66, or IP67 rated. I don't see anything about that kind of testing on the zero halliburton site. Also my gut worry is that aluminimum cases w/ metal framed closures would have a tendency to accumulate damage and leak over time more easily than the plastic Pelican cases.

It's not in the same league even Pelican makes tools, ZH makes 1000$ posh suitcases and 300$ lifestyle/everyday carry bags.

http://zerohalliburton.com/collections/

Wow, that web page is completely unusable on my computer. I'm scrolling at less than 1 FPS.

Works fine on my HP Stream 11 with Mint Xfce in Chrome with uMatrix blocking everything except zerohaliburton.com. Scrolling isn't super smooth, but more than usable.

At some point in the past (maybe when they were purchased by ACE?), Zero Halliburton decided to decrease the maximum stress their joints were designed to handle. These days, it's very easy to break a ZH case compared to a pelican, especially when open. Most ZH bags aren't watertight either.

ZH is aesthetically superior to Pelican in my opinion, but I trust pelican more to keep my gear safe and dry.

I've got a 3rd-hand Halliburton case from the 60s(?) and love it. The main issue is that it really freaks out flight attendants on international flights, because everyone knows that you put bombs in aluminum briefcases.

I thought that the iconic shady association with Halliburton cases was cash for illicit transactions, per TV Tropes:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BriefcaseFullOfMo...

Yes they are the iconic "spy attaches" from TV and movies. They are also very iconic of the luxury early trans atlantic and early jet age era of air travel.

Halliburton used to make some really good luggage today I don't really know, I'm all for buying good luggage it's one of the reasons that I buy samsonite they last for years and even decades but 1200$ on a suitcase is beyond what I would ever be willing to spend especially considering that there are better and cheaper options out there.

I don't know how many of you have worked in or around salt water, but you can't have anything besides stainless steel even exposed to salt air without it corroding. Pretty unlikely a toughbook will last more than a few months in this environment.

Even a pelican case being opened daily will mean corrosive salt will get on the components, but its got more of a chance because it does seal tightly.

It looks like he has a v2 build here:

http://www.southernfriedscience.com/the-beaglebox-2-a-dirt-c...

His blog posts are oddly undated though. Not sure why anyone would decide to omit this.

> His blog posts are oddly undated though. Not sure why anyone would decide to omit this.

Dates are there, just in a non-obvious place. They're at the bottom, just above his photo/bio. The article linked in the HN post is from July 21, 2015 and the one you linked is from May 9, 2016.

"His blog posts are oddly undated though. Not sure why anyone would decide to omit this."

Because it's the smart thing to do. See http://doncrowther.com/blogging/blogpostdating, https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/content-m... or more in general https://www.google.com/search?q=don't+date+blog+posts .

While I can get behind some of the points made in the articles you reference, for tech articles the date provides very important context. Imaging the shift in your thinking if this article was 10 years old. Little in tech is timeless, especially hardware. Put the date, please.

From my experience with a raspberry pi's, they're disks can easily become corrupted. If I needed a rugged computer out in the field, that would be a last choice. (I know he didn't use a pi, but I'm sure the problem still exists.)

That's a combination of cheap SD cards and an OS/File System that isn't very conservative on write calls.

Older Pi's basically just eat SD cards for lunch when they were used especially if you had swap enabled which you kinda had too for any realistic desktop performance on the early boards.

It's slightly less of a problem now they have more RAM and tweaks to the OS made the Pi slightly more compatible with SD cards but you are still going to run into problems if you can't fit everything in RAM unless you are really buying high end SD cards (and even then it's a bet).

The same holds kinda true for all of these embedded boards and memory cards (unless you go for CF which are somewhat designed for "HDD" level of RW/ops). If you are going to build Pi style PC I highly recommend to either get one of the Pi like boards that has SATA or get an expansion board like this one http://www.suptronics.com/xseries/x300.html and just use a normal/low power 2.5" drive.

Same here. Twice now I've installed Raspian on a Pi, left it running without having a real plan on what to use it for, come back to it after a couple of months, and found that it's crashed and doesn't boot anymore. They sound like a great option for small stuff where you just want to leave it running without any real power usage, but I just don't trust them anymore.

I might try once more with the system on a USB stick and a bunch of tweaks to cut down on the background IO. There are other SBCs with built in flash, that might be an option as well.

You probably should consider buying better microSD cards and if possible, avoid FAT32.

Note one reason to go with something like a Beaglebone Black over other options is that it has massive I/O options for electronics and sensors, and the ability to go into massively reduced power sleep modes.(that depends on the kernel, of course)

This is cool but what about a waterproof tablet case and the cheapest android tablet you can find? Would probably have the same computing capacity and is easier to replace/carry spares/deploy multiple.

Can't hook up external sensors as easily. It's hinted at in the OP.

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