Off-Grid Cyberdeck with RPI and Pelican Case
back7.co
back7.co
1. If you're off the grid, where are you going to get power to run this?
2. If there's no power grid or internet, you probably have much bigger problems than "how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia." Those problems would probably last longer than you want to schlep around and item like this.
3. I'm not under the impression that Raspberry Pi's are especially durable, though the SD-card storage is probably the weakest link (though both those things probably have benefits of being common things that allow for the scavenging of replacement parts).
4. If you need to protect from an EMP, I don't think "tinfoil lined cardboard box" will be sufficient. I was reading up on that a couple of months ago when the war started, and it sounds like little gaps in the shielding can seriously compromise the effectiveness of the sheilding.
5. Mil-spec connectors look cool, but if you need to use something like this, you'll probably want connectors that are a common as possible. A connector is useless if you don't have anything to plug into it. Some kind of terminal block would probably make more sense. Using a male connector seems like a particularly fatal flaw (if you used female, you'd at least be able to stick wires in the holes in a pinch).
If you want to usefully prepare for any doomsday scenario, you probably need to really carefully think about your actual requirements in that scenario, and then build to those requirements. IMHO, if it's an actual doomsday, it's probably safe to assume technological society will collapse and not recover for generations, and any high technology would in reality be a short-to-medium term consumable that will break without replacement.
There are many sources of off-grid power. Solar, wind, hydro being the big three.
> 2. If there's no power grid or internet, you probably have much bigger problems than "how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia." Those problems would probably last longer than you want to schlep around and item like this.
s/Wikipedia/GIS
Agreed, but that's the kind of thing that should be one of the first things you think about in these scenarios with powered electronics, and it wasn't treated here at all.
>> 2. If there's no power grid or internet, you probably have much bigger problems than "how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia." Those problems would probably last longer than you want to schlep around and item like this.
> s/Wikipedia/GIS
So let's say you have a reasonable doomsday requirement for maps. Why this thing, and not some paper maps? Or a kindle loaded with a bunch of street atlases?
I feel like you're looking at this from wrong perspective. It's not "how can this <thing> meet a requirement, but "what (combination of) things can best meet my requirements." The former will weigh you down with lot of albatrosses, the later may give you a usable toolkit.
If you wish to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Of course, any discussion involving off grid power would involve a symposium on the chemistry of photovoltaic cells, an introduction to EM physics and silicon manufacturing.
Or just assume someone will figure out they need a solar pack from REI.
Sure, if you want to pay 3x higher for it than else where. I love REI, but my wallet hates it when I visit.
Actually, yeah. You can send away for them for free for most US states. Though it does seem like city street atlases aren't much of a thing anymore.
2.
3. Raspberry Pi's are cheap. You could buy a few.
4. You could wrap the Pelican case in multiple layers of tin foil, or sheet metal.
5. Connectors can be stripped, and wires twisted together.
In a doomsday scenario, I think it's almost certain you will not need a general purpose computer, and such a thing will be an albatross. You will need be mobile to find food and safe shelter. You will not need to hack the Vault-Tec mainframe to download a map to lightly-guarded supply depots. You will not have the luxury of trying to construct a power generator for a new settlement.
The main use-case I can think of for this would be as a low-power PC at a basecamp connected to a solar source.
During extreme weather or events you would close it, it could be transported safely via raft / boat / etc. I find the descriptor "off-grid" apt to indicate this.
Under your scenario of being mobile in some sort of doomsday scavenging scenario, a mobile phone would be appropriate. This isn't suited for that, but I don't think anyone suggested it to be.
Remember, the title here is "Off-Grid" not "Post cataclysmic disaster". There's lots of quotidian off-grid experiences people experience all the time. Sometimes you end up in "nature" where there is power but it's a bit hard to come by and you're a day or two out from civilization. Sometimes you're traveling and you just don't have a power outlet with steady power near you or you just have enough access on a plane/train/etc to power your smartphone and nothing else.
My partner's parents' power was knocked out during a hurricaine a couple years ago and they were without power for a few days. They had their smartphones but wanted to conserve power in case they needed maps or something. This solution actually works quite well for that situation.
That's what the title says, but he's also trying to EMP shield it, so he's definitely thinking about "post cataclysmic disaster" cases.
If the bombs fall, I don't think PC will be very useful, and putting effort into making sure you have one actually seems like it could do more harm than good.
My sense is there might be fallacy underlying this of computer-people assuming the tool they're most skilled with will always remain important and useful to them.
I wish that they were either cheap or available.
they are neither lately.
I would like a source (1) low power, E-ink book readers with (2) an SD card slot that can handle large cards, and ideally (3) open to hacking.
This is a very small set, possibly zero. All of the android readers are ruled out because it's power overkill just to get bits off a card to flip an e-ink screen and then go back to zero power for days or weeks. There used to be some readers with SD slots but those are often limited to 32 gig. And I want (3) in case the reader doesn't handle the formats I want.
Such a machine /would/ be an offline, after civilization goes away machine. You'd want wikipedia, emergency medical handbook, plant identification books, etc etc.
Is a fun read. It seriously considers these questions and talks about practical things, like how to salvage iron ore from scrap rather than having to resort to mining it initially.
I don't know the reasoning behind it, but it makes Wikipedia significantly less useful for this particular use case than it might otherwise be. WikiBooks might fill the gap in some areas, but it's just not got as wide coverage.
This is... uh... news to me?
You could fully shut down the Pi (which would require some external hardware or user input to wake it up again) but even then compared to usual low power electronics drawing microamps in deep sleep, the milliamps the Pi slurps up is a lot. It would probably last a few weeks, maybe months in this state, but it would also take 30+ seconds to boot every time you need to do anything.
It'll be amazing next year, but not right now.
Power is something you can do yourself. We have a cabin with 5 x solar panels and a 3kw inverter for example. Others may just have a deep cycle battery connected to a trickle charger. It's quite likely that there may be power outages but you still have 3g/4g internet connectivity.
3 and 5 are good points. I thought terminal blocks as well.
Which is why you download offline Wikipedia before the disaster. I know "preppers" have a bad rap for cos-playing, but this project strikes me as the tech equivalent of "Prepare an emergency go bag,and buy some tarp to seal your windows and doors in case of a shelter-in-place order[1]". Sure, buying your gear/rations from an Army Surplus store is cos-playey (as is the EMP shielding), but the principle is sound.
> IMHO, if it's an actual doomsday, it's probably safe to assume technological society will collapse and not recover for generations, and any high technology would in reality be a short-to-medium term consumable that will break without replacement.
I suspect you're overthinking it - this is a computing equivalent of a go bag, not a nuclear bunker. Having offline useful information will be useful from day 0 (maps, emergency frequencies, agricultural & disease info, for example). The RPi has no moving parts and can run for years: my 1st-gen pi is chugging along just fine.
1. Which is always a good idea; see https://ready.gov/kit
You misunderstand. I'm saying that browsing a downloaded copy of Wikipedia is a counterproductive waste of time in a disaster. Investing effort into making sure you'll be able to access Wikipedia at all times in even the most dire of circumstances is probably having your priorities out of whack. It's like a kid packing for a trip by filling their bag with toys.
> I suspect you're overthinking it
No, I'm questioning some of the fundamental assumptions that would cause one to construct a device like this for anything besides cyberpunk cosplay.
> but this project strikes me as the tech equivalent of "Prepare an emergency go bag,and buy some tarp to seal your windows and doors in case of a shelter-in-place order[1]
> this is a computing equivalent of a go bag
It's like the exercise-equipment equivalent of a go bag, or the kitchen-gadget equivalent of a go bag (e.g. the kind of thing that shouldn't be in a go bag in the first place).
I think the idea that this is for anything but cosplay is the result of tech people fallaciously believing their most familiar tools (i.e. general purpose computers) will always be useful, and therefore making elaborate plans to preserve their access in situations where their PC will be as obsolete as a buggy whips.
> Having offline useful information will be useful from day 0 (maps, emergency frequencies, agricultural & disease info, for example).
Even assuming that is so, I think a bulky mains-powered PC is not anything close to the right tool to provide any of that. It would be about 1000x better to have compact amount of judiciously-selected paper reference material, augmented with a kindle with an appropriate selection of eBooks if you must be less judicious.
I must ask: did you read the article? It's about a 5V system with a Raspberry pi in a case with an official raspberry pi screen packaged in a water-tight container with a custom keyboard - not too far off from a kindle, just with room for a battery/power bank. Add a modest 50W solar panel, and you have better data-density and durability than a stack of paper.
Eh, what? Paper has survived for hundreds if not thousands of years. Show me your RPi 1000 years for now, next to an equally old bible, and we'll chat again. (Not a religious argument, the bible is just an example.)
Edit: Make it 100 years from now, the effects should be obviously already at that point.
Even the lowest quality paper can easily last 50 years when stored in acceptable conditions. IIRC, they've even recovered 2000 year old readable papyrus from ancient garbage dumps in Egypt.
And SD card (especially a high-density one) will almost certainly fail with catastrophic data loss before a decade or two, if not sooner.
If my RPi has a long chain of monasteries taking care of it and making new copies every few decades, I will have more than a few RPis to show you. I think paper is an extreme example of survivorship bias: how much of it was preserved vs the total amount that was produced. If you want durability, go with clay tablets, or carving on rocks (but you're trading off against data density)
It would definitely not be. You're taking Wikipedia marketing waaay too literally. It's not the "sum of all human knowledge," it's a flawed collection of Cliff Notes for some of it. A roomful of undergraduate textbooks (or the equivalent eBooks) would be about 100 times better than Wikipedia as a foundation for knowledge, but neither would be very helpful in solving urgent, practical survival problems.
p.s.: how to evaluate usefulness - imagine you're trapped in Azovsteel and have no internet but access to sunlight, supplies are slowly running out and you need to learn how to better treat water so it can be consumed, treat wounds and repair equipment - if you have a device prepared for this, it raises your chances of survival. p.p.s.: IRL, however, defenders and civilians in Azovsteel have ways to procure electricity which allows them to use Starlink so everyday smartphones work quite well.
Wouldn't it be much easier to shield a smartphone? Those are much more compact after all. You can buy foil-lined pouches that are intended for preventing mobile devices from connecting to the network that might work against an EMP as well – at least as well as the device from TFA, which from the picture appears to have a rather large gap where both halves connect.
That's actually the only decent use case I've heard for something like this.
It still probably pretty low on the list of priorities, but it's not so obviously useless as the other ideas to justify it.
With as much space is available in that case, you could have a stack of spare SD cards pre-imaged ready to go in case the one in the Pi gets corrupted
You can also store offline open street map (OSMand) and you have GPS built in, though in the apocalypse that would stop working eventually too. I think they would actually keep transmitting (it'd make sense from a military perspective) but eventually they'd lose station-keeping ability if they don't get orbital corrections from a ground station.
The main problem you'll have is that mobile apps and OSs tend to do weird things if they're offline for an appreciable length of time. Lots of things randomly stop working because caches become invalidated. Anything that requires a login or an app that tries to update (and fails to connect) is liable to break eventually.
> EMP Shielding
Not to drag this thread too far off topic, but this concept has been coming up a lot around me in about the past week. Is there something specific that's been coming up lately about it I've missed?
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/xenon-death-flash-a-free-ph...
Its the airburst nukes (ones that detonate just above the ground) that are most harmful for life as it spreads more, its what the Chinese had been testing which got them some criticism a few years or so ago.
I'll post it new in case more people want to panic ;)
There were a lot of instances of Roman millitary in their prime performing poorly (ex Septimus Severus's wars in Caledonia) for a long period of time.
It's just 3 months of poor performance, but their potential for war is still very high.
I can certainly imagine magnetic pulses getting through the copper and inducing higher than expected voltage spikes in the internals.
I'm not aware of a particular occurrence in the past week. Noticing the topic of EMP shielding could be due to a mix of Russia's vague nuclear remarks, people finishing Neal Stephenson's book "Termination Shock," and frequency illusion.
So now instead of just Kiwix; I also have my handheld radio programming software (CHIRP), ATAK Server, microcontroller dev environment, copy of Collapse OS, etc.
I have had a similar project set bouncing around in my head. I have some LilyGo LoRa radios arriving soon to see how well Meshtastic works as an alternative to internet.
The smallest one was recently on sale for $11.99 with foam and is great for small fragile things.
In the end it's all just a toy anyways, but it feels nice to come up with these things. Makes me feel a little less helpless, maybe I should just go to the gym more often though.
For example, this cyberdeck has a mechanical keyboard which is quite rare on laptops.
Yesterday I was browsing a forum that shows cyberdecks built by users, and one had a circular screen! [1] You would definitely have a hard time finding a laptop with that! :-D
[0] https://cyberdeck.cafe/faq
[1] https://libredd.it/r/cyberDeck/comments/ulvl19/a_terminal_po...
the pelican laptop cases exist, the 1495 is a great product, albeit huge and heavy. you can actually fit 3 modern laptops, a satellite phone, a usb battery pack and a shitload of accessories into one.
As already pointed out by others, Mil-spec GPIO female connectors would probably be more versatile and easier to use than male ones in the present design. More durable storage and e-ink display would be also nice.
I had to scroll all the way back up to the top, at which point the default binding magically returned.
I didn't appreciate that at all.
P.S. if you did appreciate having a back-button shortcut for that slide show, reply here and let's talk about it in a two-hour podcast.