Raspberry Pi 3B+ Hackable Linux Handheld
yarh.io
yarh.io
And 3d printing 340$.. did the author mean buying the 3D printer too? Because I'm sure if you have a friend who has a printer they can print it for 10$ and they make a 8$ profit with that.
The reason I want a portable Linux handheld computer is, because the direction in which smartphones are moving towards is frightening to say the least. Smartphones are essentially mobile computers and for many parts of the world the first computing experience. COVID-19 situation has shown how mobile computing has been taken for granted and misery of those who have no access to it[3].
Can we imagine a computer manufacturer selling $2000 computer which will receive security updates for only 3 years if lucky, can't install alternate operating systems or software of our choice? Then why are we providing smartphone manufacturers with such privileges? With that unfair advantage they are dictating mobile computing for the entire world. I'm afraid it's just a matter of time, when this trend scale up and affects overall computing in general.
[1]https://n-o-d-e.net/zeroterminal3.html
[2]https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone
[3]https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp...
https://davejansen.com/installing-ubuntu-18-10-on-a-gpd-pock...
That choice should include more than just "Linux".
Many, nearly all "Raspberry Pi competitors", fail to offer that choice.
Consider this one from a few days ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24378758
For me, the single most attractive aspect of the RPi was booting from SD card, no user data or user programs stored on the "device" (computer). Hence, I can run Linux, and/or BSD, and/or Plan9, etc. I can have a selection of different SD cards, each with a different OS. This is how I built systems for myself before RPi. Boot from USB, everything running in RAM, nothing necessary stored on HDD.
However, when RPi alternatives are "advertised" and discussed on HN, the focus usually is solely on (non-bootloader) specifications and price. The option to run multiple OS is seemingly not a concern for any commenter and not a "target" in the manufacturer's marketing.
The best computers for me have been development boards. The reason for this is simple. In most cases they are less biased toward one OS, namely Linux. I probably would feel differently if Linux was favourite OS and had no desire to run anything else. However, I do desire to run other OS, in addition to Linux. Need to have that choice.
This "bias toward less choice" does not stop at the OS-level. Often I see bias toward certain high-level programming languages. This includes the example above from a few days ago. "WebAssembly and Javascript."
When the RPi was first announced there was mention of "running Linux" and was suggested the device would geared toward Python programming. I feared the worst. Thankfully, things turned out differently.
Companies like Microsoft have so much cash, they will constantly be poisoning the well of software freedom destroying the last remnants of privacy, long after their own business models became obsolete or out of fashion. I fully expect Google and Facebook will pose the same issue long into the future. Their models too will see their sun set, but they will still work to have their fingers in our pies (no pun intended).
I get flashbacks to the college intern I interviewed that excitedly told me about the RPi telemetry design he created for a rocket. Got it all coded up and working great.
After some prodding he confessed that it failed on launch. The micro SD connector couldn’t take the vibration.
If there shield-like RasPi touchscreen open source drivers, mainlined in Linux, and also included in Raspbian and Debian, I'd like to hear of it.
(Blob-free would also be nice, though the RasPi itself has blob problems, so isn't as good as it could be for open source.)
EDIT:
if you want to have a look at the installer script it's here: https://github.com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-Scripts/b... (the business end starts at line 222)
https://github.com/librerpi/rpi-open-firmware https://github.com/itszor/vc4-toolchain/issues/7
> 3D printing, filaments, etc. 340.00
Is this just for the cost of the raw printstock? Or does it include the price of a low-end printer?
I'm guessing the rest of the price is paying to have it printed by a third party.
Anyway, here's what I'm working on: https://twitter.com/MrRobotBadge/status/1274490808616419328
It's based on the VT-100. It's got a 69 key keyboard. The name VT-420 was already taken, so it's called the VT-69.
Yes! With a nice mechanical keyboard. I found a nice display for something like this a while ago; these 1280x400 pixel, 191 mm wide (visible area) IPS displays originally meant for automotive use:
https://www.buydisplay.com/catalogsearch/advanced/result/?re...
I don't think getting a reflective LCD display in this form factor is realistic these days, they stopped manufacturing those in the 80s. I bought this OLED 256x64 display to play with- it's got enough pixels to make it work, but it's just too small/high density to work well form-factor-wise with a full width tenkeyless keyboard.
A device with a monochrome screen, 800x480 resolution, 3D case with a qwerty keyboard shoudn't exceed $100.
They day a little netbook/palmtop arrives with Linux at a ridiculous price (the one of an RPI), it would be almost a second revolution as the zaurus.
Portable Nethack/IF/SSH/IRC/Usenet + coding, PDF/image/video viewer with framebuffer support, cheap audio from a SOC if any.
That would be my dream device.
Disclaimer: I love my OpenPandora!
e: I checked supported devices list for PmOS “just to be sure” — I was genuinely pleasantly surprised
Can anyone share their browsing experience on 8GB RPi?
It tried the same software configuration previously on a RPi 3B+ (1GB): there, Firefox was quickly exhausting the RAM.
If you want to try it again sometime and are up for trying Elixir, look into the Nerves based kiosk. It builds an image specifically for the RPi3, and you can run Phoenix LiveView and entire system for less than a hundred megs of ram: https://github.com/nerves-web-kiosk/webengine_kiosk
At the time I thought Windows IOT was not optimized, but maybe it's just the whole x86 ecosystem that hasn't been adapted to ARM computing.
I think you can install Android on a Pi, it would be interesting to see if Chrome is fast enough there.
I bet you could CNC some injection molds the cost of 2-3 of these chassis. If someone could do that and sell the housing for ~$30 each, this would be an impressive piece of kit.
I get that the parts are 3D printed, but are they being printed on-demand or something? I wonder if the 3D printing files have been open sourced - would be interesting to hear from a 3D printing enthusiast here about the costs (it's HN, there's bound to be many!).
There's a dozen things to print in the zip. I sliced 3-4 of them, and none seemed particularly heavy. Something like $0.50 of filament each for what I pay for PLA, which would put the whole thing at ~$6 of material. Perhaps the cost is being driven by some sort of print-on-demand costs?
FWIW, you could also buy an Ender 3 for ~$200, and $140 buys a lot of filament, so you could get into the 3D printing hobby for less than the quoted cost.
Second, the mold itself is made of a very hard steel, though there are cheaper "soft tooling" materials for making lower quantities before the tool is worn out. The special steel may require special machining processes. The tool also has a variety of moving parts such as ejector pins and other mechanisms if the part is not shaped to be ejected cleanly.
If the mold comes from low-cost supplier, there's the added cost of reworking it in order to iron out minor problems. I spoke to one tool-and-die machinist who told me most of his income came from repairing cheap molds.
If you save on the mold, you often pay more for the pieces due to scrappage, difficulties setting up the molding machine, or the short lifespan of the mold.
Right now I work in a business that makes expensive high-tech equipment, so we can afford to eat the cost of making expensive parts from expensive molds.
For prototype quantities, we tend to prefer things like folded sheet metal, CNC, and even small aluminum castings with secondary machining processes. In that milieu, the cost of 3d printing is actually quite competitive. I just got some pieces costing about 1000 bucks each, but they were delivered to my doorstep a few days after being designed.
Also: Something I've learned is that everything I know might be wrong tomorrow. Every manufacturing process is being steadily improved, and a process that you wrote off as being too expensive might have suddenly become cheap for reasons you're not aware of. Always ask.
I do a lot of 3d printing but have run in to the limits quite a few times where I want something bigger than my print volume allows, or I want something water proof, or food safe, or I want something transparent (which can also be used outside), or I want it smoother...
resin printing or finding someone with a big printer... these things help sometimes.
Another trick I have yet to succeed at is using some existing plastic part, or transparent plastic from a soda bottle... Repurposing for these edge cases.
For an alternative hackable laptop like shell for RPi, consider the CrowPi2 [1]. It does not support touchscreen but the screen estate is much bigger (11.6") and can be configured with many sensors for testing and developing IoT based projects. As an added bonus the price is quite affordable for students and hobbyists. The review of CrowPi2 can be found here [2].
[1] http://linuxgizmos.com/hackable-crowpi2-steam-education-lapt...
[2] https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/crowpi2-review-raspbe...
Getting either a Pine phone or Pine tablet sounds better. Do the Pine phones make sense just as Linux devices, not using them as a phone?
I always travel with a small iPad Pro, and with Mosh, tmux, and a really powerful VPS from hetzner (which is so cheap I always leave it running), I feel I always have a Linux system with me that makes a practical writing and programming platform.
Can the Pine phones be plugged into a large monitor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F88CSWH8SEY
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/2521
its possible, but hard and buggy
How can the 3D printing be that much?
Honestly for that kind of money you're getting kinda close to having them SLS printed which would be much sturdier and look nicer...
You can't just add up all the components, add 10% on top and expect a price level that competes with Apple. Looks like a hobby project to me and there is no harm in supporting the creator.
Is there no touchscreen / smallscreen friendly Linux desktop shell?
$629? As someone else stated, ouch.