Show HN: Beepberry – a portable e-paper computer for hackers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Beepberry – a portable e-paper computer for hackers

beepberry.sqfmi.com

731 pointserohead227 comments

Hi. I heard HN likes e-paper gadgets so I wanted to share a little side project I’ve been working on with @sqfmi. We’re building Beepberry - a portable e-paper computer for hackers, designed for chatting on Beeper. My day job is running Beeper [0], but I will always have a soft spot for building hardware.

I wanted to create a ‘weekend’ device that would let me stay in touch with friends and family, without the distractions of a full smartphone. I imagined a tiny, hackable e-paper screen with a physical keyboard, powered by a Raspberry Pi, that I could use to chat around my home…and pretty much nothing else.

Before Beeper, the idea probably would not have gone anywhere. Most chat apps do not have an API, making it practically impossible to hack something like this together. Enter Beeper, with connections to 15+ chat networks. Built on top of Matrix, Beeper is fully hackable. You can write alternative fun clients [1], bots [2] and more!

Today, sqfmi is starting to take pre-orders at https://beepberry.sqfmi.com for the first batch. It’s $79 (or $99 including a Pi Zero). Specs: Sharp Memory LCD (same display tech as in Pebble!), Pi Zero (BT/WIFI), physical keyboard, 2000mAh lipo.

On top of being an amazing Beeper chat device, it’s basically an e-paper Cyberdeck that fits in your pocket. It’s a ton of fun to hack on. Keep in mind - THIS IS NOT A REAL FINISHED PRODUCT. It’s basically a devkit.

More info in the blog post: https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-x-sqmfi-beepberry, or join the Discord/Matrix channel https://beepberry.sqfmi.com/docs/getting-started#join-the-be.... I’ll hang out a bit here to answer questions as well.

[0] https://beeper.com [1] https://github.com/tulir/gomuks [2] https://github.com/maubot/maubot

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i almost didn't open this because it said 'e-paper' and i've sort of dismissed e-paper for this kind of thing

this is much more interesting than an e-paper device; it's a memory-in-pixel lcd device, which means 100 times better refresh rate and 1000 times better power consumption than e-paper. the lcd in question (ls027b7dh01, i assume, though that information is missing from the web pages) is supposed to run on 175μW at 20fps, so you can get a full usable computer system in submilliwatt territory, so the 2.2 kilojoules in a cr2032 can power it for weeks

however, i think that, as a low-power device, this is probably fatally flawed. the rp2040 dooms it; the rp2040 lacks a reasonable deep-sleep mode; its lowest-power mode is nearly a milliwatt, so it will drain the battery flat when it's not being used

also it's unclear, in this design, how much the rp2040 can do without powering up the pi zero, which is a humongous power hog, using over 1000 milliwatts. so instead of weeks of active use from a cr2032 (and months of standby if you use a low-power micro instead of an rp2040) you get hours

what's the point of using a super expensive memory-in-pixel lcd to get the display power consumption down from e-paper's 10-100 milliwatts into submilliwatt territory if you're just going to burn a thousand milliwatts in a raspberry pi? just use a conventional lcd then, maybe one with nice 24-bit color. old nokia lcds will run on a milliwatt

maybe an esp32 would be a better middle ground if you aren't willing to go all the way to an ambiq apollo3 or something, which can (hypothetically) give you submilliwatt power consumption with workstation-class performance, as long as you don't need virtual memory; you probably want an esp32 or equivalent in there anyway for wi-fi

usb-c is a great way to be able to hook up a full-size external keyboard, but speaking usb-c to a keyboard is also probably beyond the capabilities of the rp2040, and so would also need to power up the giant power hog pi zero

> its lowest-power mode is nearly a milliwatt, so it will drain the battery flat when it's not being used

Add a hardware power button?

I'm not too sure of this trend of rebranding 1980's monochrome LCDs as the "new" e-paper.

The refresh rates are nice but it's really not the same, and in direct sunlight on a hot California day you can see a world of difference between the contrast and glare of a high school graphing calculator and a Kindle.

From what I understand, memory-in-pixel LCD technology is relatively new to the market. Does it rely on the same screen as “1980s” LCDs?

these aren't 1980s lcds, they have an order of magnitude better contrast (slightly better contrast than a swindle), reportedly an order of magnitude lower power (i haven't measured mine yet), and much lower latency. this memory-in-pixel stuff relies on fabricating an entire flip-flop in every pixel, made of a layer of silicon on the glass, and that capability seems to be only about 13 years old, and only sharp has it

they do have glare but are quite readable in direct sunlight or outdoors in the shade or on a cloudy day

also they cost almost three orders of magnitude more

but they definitely aren't epaper. aside from the glare, speed, contrast, and power consumption differences, they fade in about 30 seconds when you unplug them, rather than staying stable for years, and they don't have grayscale

>in direct sunlight on a hot California day you can see a world of difference between the contrast and glare of a high school graphing calculator and a Kindle.

Sharp Memory LCDs are reflective, not transreflective. They're easier to read outdoors than indoors, much like eink. (Sharp markets these screens for devices like bike computers and gas pumps.) Some of the optical properties are in the same ballpark as eink as well.

Aye, the "diagram" shows nothing of the topology. Can the rp2040 run the show with the Zero not even attached? That would be interesting.

Furthermore, there's no radio other than what's on the Zero? That whacks it right into useless territory for me. What's the point of a low-power device if all it has is high-power communication?

My first/only care for this would be a LoRa backpack. Or even some Nordic thing, or BLE, I don't really care, just anything's better than wifi.

well, i think an autonomous computer can be pretty useful. i mean, i used computers for 12 years before i got internet access; the closest i got to networking was dialing up bbses

maybe if you had a speaker you could do ultrasonic communication with ble-like range; there are several megahertz of spectrum there that can propagate through air for a few meters, and milliwatts might be adequate. similarly with infrared; historically it's suffered a lot from highly directional interfaces that assume stupid, fragile encoding schemes, but we have enough compute now to do better

but yeah a low-power radio would open up a world of possibilities

Spot on. I was so excited to see the form factor, and then my excitement was deflated as soon as I noticed the component details.

Note to any hardware hackers out there: I would buy the crap out of a unit in this form factor with an ESP32, LiPo charging, and proper deep-sleep oriented circuit design (I have seen too many circuits with cheap voltage regulators leaking many tens of μA).

You may be interested in our other product Franky then :)

https://sqfmi.com/franky/

Doesn’t look like it’s available to purchase though :(

I can see the beepberry page but this gives a generic database error.

I had the same result. This is the best photo/description I could find: https://www.hackster.io/news/sqfmi-s-franky-gets-a-blackberr... .

this is more promising but you forgot the keyboard

can you plug in an external keyboard

or are you supposed to program it via whisper.cpp speech recognition

That page just has some pictures. Is there a GH repo for the design, or some other kind of documentation? I would love to learn how this is built.

javascript developers be like, tens of microamps? i've forgotten how to count that low. i don't even get out of bed for less than two peer amps

but i just want to wake up for five milliseconds

And the ESP32 (Xtensa ones anyway) have pretty meh deep sleep as well. It’s the entire reason we have it power gated and use an STM32G0 (and now an L4) on our board at work :(

how low power have you been able to get the esp32 to sleep, if you don't mind sharing? and the stm32g? i'm sure the l4 is fantastic

wrt xtensa, in theory risc-v ought to help them with lowering the power suck (it sure helped the gd32v) but i'm not sure it makes a difference in sleep

and of course for milliamps per mips, going to subthreshold switching like ambiq will make a much bigger difference than anything architectural

> the rp2040 dooms it; the rp2040 lacks a reasonable deep-sleep mode; its lowest-power mode is nearly a milliwatt, so it will drain the battery flat when it's not being used

Low tech immediate solution: add a power switch cutting off the battery.

Bad for the RTC, but it's nothing that NTP or even rdate can't fix (or just don't use the switch if you need the RTC)

Better solution: replace the rp2040 in the next revision.

that's not a solution, for three reasons

the screen will fade after 30 seconds (unlike epaper)

once or twice an hour you'll forget to turn off the switch when you stop to think and the battery will drain anyway

and you'll corrupt the flash

> the screen will fade after 30 seconds (unlike epaper)

So what? I see that as a positive!

> you'll forget to turn off the switch

Uh, if I don't see the screen fading in 30 seconds, I'll conclude I forgot.

> once or twice an hour

I intend to only turn on the device when I need it.

> and you'll corrupt the flash

I don't think so, I use industrial SDs + journaling filesystems, and I do `sync` before turning off my devices.

let's contrast the sensibly designed device with the design i think you are describing

on the sensibly designed device, say i'm answering an email. i look at the screen, ponder for 30 seconds, scroll down, ponder for 30 seconds, and hit reply. redrawing the screen took, perhaps, a million clock cycles each time, so it required powering up a 240 megahertz esp32 for 2 milliseconds. so i've consumed 6 milliseconds of cpu, 0.6 millijoules at 100 milliwatts, plus the 50 microwatts of the screen for 60 seconds, which is 3 millijoules

then i spend 10 minutes typing out a 300-word reply at 60 words per minute with a duty cycle of about 50%. each time i press a key, the cpu powers up, processes for an average of 65536 clock cycles (0.3 ms), updates the screen, and powers back down. in total my 1500 keystrokes result in 450 ms of cpu time and 45 millijoules. keeping the screen active has cost another 30 millijoules.

finally i power up the 1.5 watt wifi radio hardware for 100 milliseconds and send the mail, consuming another 150 millijoules

total power consumption to read and answer the email: a bit under 250 millijoules. i'll get over 9000 emails out of a cr2032 coin cell, about six months of use

[i'm being very generous with these numbers to be sure to estimate conservatively. my best estimate is that this screen will hold 12 lines of 40 characters of text readably, and proportional-font layout with word wrap takes about 40 clock cycles per character, including blitting from a font bitmap, so redrawing the screen should take about 19200 cycles, not a million; and handling a text editing keystroke should average 7500 cycles, not 65536; and sending an email over wifi should require it to be powered up for 1 ms, not 100.]

with what i think is your proposed design, i have to leave the pi zero running at 1 watt for the whole 11 minutes, so i use 660 joules, 2640 times as much. the cr2032 coin cell will last me for 3.3 emails

2640 times more energy consumption means 1/2640 the battery life. with the battery they propose to use i think it's 33 emails vs. 90000 instead of 3.3 vs. 9000

[corrected obvious dumb math error above, sorry]

evidently the second device is not an adequate replacement for the first

even if it does support sixel

---

as for corrupting the flash, a flash block that was partially written before the chip lost power looks exactly like a correctly written block some percentage of the time, maybe a high percentage like 99%. but sometimes you will read back corrupted data, maybe depending on temperature, emi, or state of charge. so cutting power to your industrial sds when you're not sure if the flash is writing or not is going to bite you sooner or later

better hope it's not on orbit when it happens

it was for me

> evidently the second device is not an adequate replacement for the first

Agreed, but the 2nd one is available on preorder. I'd like to see the 1st one you describe, and I think it may happen. Buying the 2nd one to show my interest in the project seems like the best way to make that happen!

> even if it does support sixel

Well TBH if only the 2nd one supported sixels, that'd be my choice (though I'd work hard to have that working in the 1st one too lol)

> so cutting power to your industrial sds when you're not sure if the flash is writing or not is going to bite you sooner or later

When I type sync and wait a while, I do assume the flash is not writing.

>> you'll forget to turn off the switch

> Uh, if I don't see the screen fading in 30 seconds, I'll conclude I forgot.

I think that many cases of forgetting to switch it off would involve laying down the device and not looking at it. Say you get up to switch on a lamp or to get a snack, but get a phone call or get interrupted by your child. Even if you look at it a bit later and see the screen being off, I doubt you’ll always remember whether you flipped that switch?

There’s a reason smartphones automatically switch off the screen when idle.

the reason smartphones switch off the screen when idle is that the screen uses literally twenty thousand times more power than this screen, over a watt instead of fifty microwatts, so leaving it on drains the battery rapidly

it's pretty shitty for things like reading a book, watching a compilation, or text chat, but for a smartphone the alternative is worse

by contrast, running the pi zero for one second uses more energy than keeping this screen on all day

First off - this thing was designed to be a fun hacker toy, not a real product. Buyer beware!

Plan for power management is pretty simple - trim as much fat from OS startup sequence as possible to get boot-times down to ~5s, eg https://github.com/IronOxidizer/instant-pi. Then turn the Pi off as much as possible. Write to screen, turn off Pi. Set timers on rp2040 to turn Pi on periodically.

With the 2000mAh battery, if the plan works, it should run for a while.

does that mean that every time you hit a key (after the idle timeout) you have to wait 5 seconds for the pi to boot, wasting 5 more precious joules (a minute of active usage battery life at 100mW)

or does the pi zero have a submilliwatt suspend to ram and i'm just the last to know

i think that it could be a fun hacker toy if you put a low-power microcontroller on it with access to the screen and keyboard and control over the pi's power rails (and the rp2040's if you put that in too)

as a bonus if the low-power micro was an esp32 you would have wifi and bluetooth

then you only need to fire up the pi when its computational gronk is really needed, and the ui stays responsive the whole time

2 amp hours (why would you say 'two thousand milliamp hours', that's four extra syllables for no reason) is 27 kilojoules at 3.7 volts; that's ten months at one milliwatt, a weekend at an esp32-like 100 milliwatts, 7 hours at an optimistic one watt, or three hours at 2.5 watts, which i think is more realistic for the pi

you won't even be able to use this thing all night with the pi running; you'll need an external battery to recharge it before the sun comes back up, like that old laptop that you used to take out of the house back when its battery lasted more than two hours

also 2 amp hours is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 grams of battery, while the rest of the device is i think around 15 grams. admittedly still pretty small and light compared to the fragile monsters that pass for android cellphones nowadays

> does that mean that every time you hit a key (after the idle timeout) you have to wait 5 seconds for the pi to boot, wasting 5 more precious joules (a minute of active usage battery life at 100mW)

Yes, that's exactly the plan. Pi zero does not have suspend to ram unfortunately, hence this elaborate work around. Remember, the use case is a weekend chat device. This power management scheme fits the use case perfectly.

well, i agree that your chat message being delayed for 5 seconds is not critical

but waiting 5 seconds for a keystroke to be echoed (sometimes) is appalling. you would not get permission to do a user study from an irb. it would be denied on grounds of needless cruelty to experimental subjects

it would fit the use case perfectly if you had a low-power microcontroller that updated the screen in response to keystrokes, but what you're describing is a user interface design botched for no good reason

even the rp2040 would work for that at the weekend level

this is not quite a 'solar freakin' roadways' level of mistake because you could fix it with relatively minor tweaks to the design, but if you don't, you'll be left with a design that's unusable on battery, either because of battery life or responsiveness

fwiw i don't think restarting a computer in response to a keystroke is an elaborate workaround at all; that part of the design is perfectly reasonable

check out how mosh predicts keystroke effects for 'speculative local echo' and think about how you could do that on the rp2040 (or ideally an esp32 or apollo3 or something) while you're waiting on the giant linux behemoth to awaken from its slumber and restart gomuks or vim or whatever

I think you are misunderstanding the plan. The device will stay on until you turn it off, or 5 mins after last keystroke.

you say 'I think you are misunderstanding the plan. The device will stay on until you turn it off, or 5 mins after last keystroke.'

that's the plan i described yesterday in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35983387

that's the plan i think will give you three hours of battery life: 2 amp hours times 3.7 volts divided by 2.5 watts gives 3 hours of use. 36 5-minute timeouts. do you have a different estimate? did i miscalculate?

that's not a weekend

in that comment i also explained an approach that would beat that by two orders of magnitude if you applied it with the same components (though there i supposed the hardware would use an esp32)

btw my grandparent comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35984332 is upvoted to 11 at the moment so evidently even if you think it's stupid your customers don't

if it doesn’t meet your needs, then don’t buy the device.

You use “customers” as if this were trying to be a full product. This is a weekend hack. Of course there’s going to be low-hanging fruit that could be optimized away.

Stop shitting on the guy’s earnest enjoyment. What you’re doing is akin to going to your favorite package’s issues tracker and making a P0 request like “rewrite it in rust, python sucks”

you seem to have skimmed the previous messages and misunderstood them

it's not a weekend hack, it's a commercial product, designed and built by a team of several people. the weekend hackers (or chatters) are the intended customers; they are not the makers. they have 50 prototype units in stock, and they're taking preorders for two more larger batches which they expect to ship in august and september. august is 70 days away, an interval which is 35 times larger than a weekend

the 'weekend' aspect is how long the user should expect it to work for, not how long they've spent on developing it

unfortunately, their current design seems to have a fatal flaw that renders it useless for its intended purpose, but one that's easily fixed

my comments are not shitting on it; they explain how to fix it, providing information the original designers were evidently unaware of, so that they can ship a product that fulfills its intended purpose, which would probably make them a few tens of thousands of dollars. up to them if they want to do it or not; i'm not an investor. if they don't, probably someone else will

i could of course be mistaken about this, but so far there's no reason to suspect that i am; the pushback in comments here has all been ego-driven posturing like 'This power management scheme fits the use case perfectly.' instead of something like 'actually i have a rp2040 deep-sleeping at 100 microwatts' or 'i have this pi zero w running at 700 milliwatts with such-and-such a kernel config so actually they'll get 12 hours of battery life'

You've just described a Playdate. It's a game console not a computer but it pretty much is designed how you've suggested. It also uses the same Sharp Memory LCD.

it's the sensible way to design a system around this display, but the playdate isn't what i'm looking for because it doesn't have a keyboard and also it's kind of bulky

I'll have you know my fragile monster of a razer phone 2 has survived being dropped more often than I can count XD

the razer was way lighter and less glass-intensive than currently popular phones

but what's a razer 2

Bro, if you’re taking real money it’s a real product.

Put that caveat somewhere obvious on the site. “I’m not taking this seriously but I will seriously take your money! Caveat emptor!”

It's a kitset, not a finished end user product.

The website shows it with a battery being held on with a rubber band. If you're buying this you should know what you're getting from just a quick look.

I do not need this. At all. Not one bit. Not for a second. It would be foolish of me to spend money on this.

Two, please!

Very cool.

Your reaction was similar to mine: "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" :)

With all the excited responses to this post a feel like a fool because I don't understand how one would go about using this. Admittedly I'm knew this type of product, but I want to be excited too or at least be able to come up with some use cases where I can make an informed choice on whether this product is useful or not. Is there a list or site with ideas on how to make use of products like this?

Me too, I can’t think of a situation where this would be useful although I’d like to hear how others would use it

So one possible use case. At least for me and other people that want quick access to a terminal without having to fire up a notebook or pc.

ssh into your home computer through your phone or use Termux if you're on android

Termux used to be really nice but it's fairly broken now if you installed it from google play.

... don't install it from google play then. "Problem" solved.

If you're trying to trim down on phone time, but still want to be somewhat contactable?

I guess this would require a phone with a WiFi hotspot when you're out and about, but if you're at home and not wanting to reach for that phone this device could help.

Pocket showrunner device for my studio. Control lights, the ATEM switch, check status etc. A kind of super remote that is open.

If you could install, e.g., Mobian, you would get a full desktop Linux in your pocket with a nice interface.

I've ordered my share of little Linux gadgets. I said no more because they were wholly impractical. Well, congrats, you just caused me to pull out my wallet and buy. This looks incredible!

You should sell a case as well for people like me who don't want to bother with 3D printing.

Thanks! We plan to offer 2 cases (CNC aluminum and clear transparent plastic) once we're happy with the design

Do you need support with this design? Happy to help out!

We'll be sharing the STEP model of the device and the enclosure here https://github.com/sqfmi/beepberry-hardware Feel free to hack away!

Will the device be able to slot into an enclosure later or will more assembly be required?

The CNC version will definitely involve some screws to make it more secure

What are the odds of the clear plastic being purple and green in classic Nintendo fashion?

That would be really cool! But we may not meet the MOQ to get all those colors made

Can you do a survey or otherwise investigate demand for this because I love those colors too. 8BitDo has special editions of their controllers in those colors: https://shop.8bitdo.com/products/8bitdo-sn30-pro-special-edi...

Rather than make a custom case, it would have been neat to see this PCB just slightly smaller that it'd drop right in the Blackberry 9900 housing to match the keyboard. There are loads of reasonably priced enclosures available that are already designed to fit selected keyboard.

-edit- As pointed out below, there is an early access program for developers a little further down on the order page that I missed.

Original comment below ----v

I love the product but I take issue with the term "Order now" on the website.

> Below is the shipping timeline for Beepberry: > Beepberry without Raspberry Pi Zero W: ~ August 2023 > Beepberry with Raspberry Pi Zero W: ~ September 2023

I think it would be more helpful to call it a pre-order on the button. If I click "order now", I'd expect it in 6 weeks, max.

Regardless, I like the concept and look forward to buying it after a few people try it out.

It says 50 are available in the site

Ah, I see what you are talking about now.

> Beepberry Early Access Program > We have 50 units available to ship immediately to developers and hackers. If you would like to be one of the first to receive a Beepberry, please fill out the form below after placing your order.

I'm not sure how I missed that, thank you for pointing it out!

The only gripe I have about this is that it appears to be dependent on a microsd card for storage. Is there an alternative? I've been burned one too many times by corrupted storage on those to go there again.

Other than that, I want five of these.

Corrupted storage is a pain :( The Beepberry firmware can safely shutdown the Pi before disconnecting power, so hopefully that will help with SD issues. raspi-config also has a read-only overlay filesystem option now.

I started buying high endurance SD cards years ago and have never had a problem with them.

BTW are they more sensible to X rays? I've had one die early.

+1 they're quite cheap now -- as of writing, $17 for a samsung 128gb, $15 for sandisk 128gb on Amazon. I have a fleet of Raspberry Pi that have been using these cards.

The other thing you can do is to buy two and clone your SD card (or back your card up as a `.img`).

I love the form factor here. A few questions:

1) Have you considered how this could be made more mobile friendly? Most places I could see myself using a device like this, I wouldn't have access to WiFi. Is there an equivalent of a USB SIM card adapter that would fit here?

2) What sort of battery life can be achieved with this?

Looks great though! Am very likely to order an iteration of this :)

1) maybe? this is just a hacker device for now. You can easily add a USB LTE modem if you'd like.

2) battery life will depend on which OS you use, peripherals, software duty cycle etc. It's a hacker device, don't expect it to work without putting in the effort to tune/tweak it.

> You can easily add a USB LTE modem if you'd like.

Would you like some help with that?

I was only planning to add sixel support, but I could prepare you a simple configuration to use a cheap 4G module like the Quectel EC25 () at least for sending/receiving SMS, and maybe acting as an access point.

() Other options would also be possible, like Qualcomm SDX55 and SDX62/SDX65 for 5G, but the Quectel has more community support since it's also used on the linphone

(Not OP) I’d find value in this if you were considering publishing a guide.

Been working on a pi400 eink solar powered cyberdeck but haven’t done anything with cell connection yet.

So could follow long for that and for the blackberry.

I'd certainly publish a guide and a set of files to flash.

Using an internal Qualcomm SDX module, I've already got both 4G and 5G working great on my Thinkpad with just a few AT commands, so I don't foresee any practical difficulty except maybe getting MLC03 submmWave antennas (I can't find any, so I stick to B71 on 5G)

that's freaking awesome!

We seem to have very similar interests; if you want I can let you know when I release that (though it'll be nothing very complicated - just a few scripts to send and receive the right AT commands, along with a small README explaining how to provision the module with the right settings for your provider)

absolutely!

The Hayes protocol and 3GPP “standards” will be the death of me, but if you want any help with getting any of the Simcom modules up I have far too much experience with them

Let's get in touch!

Emails in my profile!

So that appears to be an actual Blackberry keyboard – are they reclaimed? OEM surplus?

Someone is still manufacturing replacement parts apparently!

Is it even legal? (Serious question)

Why would it not be? BlackBerry the company (as in the hardware one) doesn’t exist anymore, if parts exist why wouldn’t people be able to use them?

It does. They just don’t sell hardware. They sold most of the patents but still retain some and they’ve sued over the keyboard before (Google BlackBerry vs Typo keyboard) so it isn’t a dumb question. That said, if someone else is selling an OEM-like part, I doubt this is high volume enough for the people left at BlackBerry to care.

Okay, I didn’t know that, which was why I asked.

The trademark issues with the BlackBerry logo on the keyboard, combined with the "Beepberry" name, are going to be a problem.

Have been wanting to get a device just like this for a long time to do live-coding (Glicol) on. So glad you had the foresight to expose the rpi pins so I can just stick an audio hat onto it to get audio in/out

A PocketChip built by the same person that made the Pebble Time Steel 2 that's on my wrist right now.

Take my money. Again.

'Doh, original Time Steel (my P2+HR died a couple months ago).

If you have any Time Steel 2s laying around...

I loved my Pocket CHIP until it just stopped working a few days ago, and this Beepberry post today is a perfect coincidence. Since it's an RPI0w can use it as an ad-hoc serial terminal too.

I'm sure young me would have found a ton of use cases for this, but now I'm old.

Can someone tell me one or two things this could be useful for? I want to buy it just because it looks awesome.

Daylight readable display and physical keyboard make it excellent for all kinds of field work. If you're out doing things in real life this thing seems like a good choice to me. Quick calculation when you're building a chicken coop, use as a glide computer or a biking computer. Lots of outdoor stuff really.

using the GPIO. But you'd need to build some piggyback connectors. In fact if this had a JST or other connector it would be a lot better. Things like reading resistance values from sensors and displaying them back is pretty trivial, and being able to just load up different scripts to do that instead of, say arduino where you really would need to flash a program for each sensor say, would make it useful.

> I'm sure young me would have found a ton of use cases for this, but now I'm old.

Invert the problem: get one and try to hack to do whatever. That may help you regain some teen spirit :)

It may be better if you found some ideas naturally (chasing a rabbit down its rabbit hole is fun, but chasing your own rabbit is even funnier)

However, if you want ideas, here are some simple ones: - listen to your bluetooth devices like toothbrushes, scales, thermometers: try to decode and display what they send. There are many free software projects doing just that for Xiaomi devices

- connect a 4G module and try to send SMS. Most 4G modules can be driven with just AT commands so it shouldn't be too hard. The Quectel EC25 is extensively documented thanks to being present in the PinePhone: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/blob...

- then try to add a GPS antenna to make a field GPS: check https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro#GPS_/_GNSS

- then try to have a LTE data connection, using w3m with its sixel mode to visit google news https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel#w3m-integration

- try to integrate SMS, twitter etc within one client (twitter example: https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel#twitter-client-integrati... ) to post your GPS coordinates to your friends

- one everything works, increase the difficulty: flash a free firmware on the Quectel, and try to improve it, or add functions that would help your other projects, for example A-GPS to get a faster lock: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/tree...

Each one of this project should take at most one day, and may give you ideas to do more!

If you need help, get in touch, my email is in my profile.

This piece looks really nice and I almost want it!

But have no idea what to do with it. What are your plans folks? How you are using similar hardware?

I would use it to ssh and tmux to my servers, to display stats/logs and start simple scripts when needed, like a "wireless KVM".

I understand many people use smartphones or tablets for that, but I don't like the idea of having a smartphone with me at all times: I have one, but in a drawer. I charge it and use it when I need to travel. It's too intrusive otherwise.

I can use ssh from my laptop, but I like a distraction free environment: most of my apps run in full screen, to help me maintain my concentration.

So a separate device I could turn quickly, check what's happening, and type commands, would be very valuable.

I would certainly try to find a way to add sixel support to the terminal (BSD console terminals have that) then have gnuplot display some key measurements like latency scatters on top of the moving averages.

Another role would be very natural thanks to being cheap: the USB port could help me check devices without having to fear hardware damage to my laptop USB ports (voltage issues etc) or software issues (virus/trojan etc)

> I understand many people use smartphones or tablets for that, but I don't like the idea of having a smartphone with me at all times

This is where I stand. Regrettably it becomes harder and harder now that everything uses 2FA, cannot leave home without the phone.

> cannot leave home without the phone.

You most certainly can: I do that every day.

> Regrettably it becomes harder and harder now that everything uses 2FA

Which companies cause you problems? Maybe I can offer suggestions.

I barely tolerate TOTP (thanks to oathtool), but any business that want to impose SMS 2FA on me will not have me as a client.

> but any business that want to impose SMS 2FA on me will not have me as a client

Where I'm at org policy requires a specific 2FA solution. Thanks for the suggestions, though, I'm hoping to move on in a year or so and I should hopefully be able to a void this going forward.

I don't have a smartphone so I have installed 2FA app to my laptop. That works great:)

I want a "forever computer" and I think this fits the bill. I don't actually expect it to last forever, but with unix command line tools we've got one lineage of computing that has lasted more than 30 years. I want to put a solar panel and a lora modem on it, and have a little computing device that will last the rest of my life. An artifact that will be as useful in 40 years as it is now, like how old calculators with nixie tubes still fundamentally work as calculators.

Might even try finally learning orgmode, maybe use vim-orgmode one it.

For similar reasons, general future proofing, I recently started using orgmode for my todo lists, journaling and a light project management workflow. I'm a vim person, and using spacemacs with evil mode has been good for learning. I imagine I'll eventually start from scratch and only keep the pieces I like, but it's been a reasonable starting point.

This looks great for those purposes, it should interact nicely. There's a decent chance I'll pick up the watch today. (Can I make it buzz for pomodoro? Hmm.)

Awesome, you're my hero. I just ordered two of these.

It looks to be using the same Q10 keyboard as a few of the other hacks (i.e. Fairberry[0], but with the addition of the dial/hangup buttons. Are you only using them for the trackpad? Any ambitions for a touchscreen-only variant?

(if so, I've got like 15x of those Q10 keyboards scattered across my desk)

[0] https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry

The dial/hangup buttons map to modifier keys and power control, and the trackpad can be mapped to mouse/arrow/scroll keys. No plans for touchscreen yet :)

I recently switched to Beeper and as exciting as this looks, I wish that the team spent a little bit more time working on their primary app rather than working on what appears to be a toy hardware project.

Beeper is supposed to be a "universal messenger" that acts as a central place for all your messaging apps. I originally signed up because I wanted to be able to iMessage on my Android device, which has worked relatively well. In order to use the app's SMS bridge though, you have to set the app as your default SMS app (an Android requirement, no getting around it.) Unfortunately, it's just really difficult to compete with the system-level messenger app.

I've been chatting back and forth with them, and their support team has been pretty responsive, but I'll likely stop using it soon. Their app is just too buggy to be such an important part of my workflow as a default SMS app. No RCS support, notification issues, totally missing SMS messages entirely with no way to recover them? (Rare, but destructive.)

Love the idea, but needs a good bit more work. (Sorry to the team, I know some of them are here on HN.)

Tough to penalize us because Android does not expose RCS APIs. If the only part of Beeper that you don't like is the SMS part, I would recommend disabling that - go back to using Google Messages for SMS and use Beeper for the 14 other chat networks that we support.

Hey just found out about Beeper through this post and it looks like it could be a very nice fit for communicating with Apple friends/co-workers while on Android. It is very nice to find out about this app.

> Tough to penalize us because Android does not expose RCS APIs

As someone speaking from a genuine place of ignorance, the Google page relating to RCS https://jibe.google.com/ seems to imply that RCS is just a universal specification and there are a number of documents that seem relevant after a search for "gsma rcs specification".

Is this an Android permissions thing where the only practical way to implement RCS support would be through a Google-supplied API?

I could be wrong but the only app that can send and receive messages through RCS on Android is Googles own messages app. Since Google runs their own RCS instance, they're the only ones interfacing with it. There's currently no API to allow for third party apps to make use of RCS.

That being said, RCS is designed to be an open standard. It's just that only Google is really pushing for it right now and running an instance of it. If I'm not mistaken, AT&T ran their own instance for a while but it was shut down in favor of Googles instance.

RCS should work between different instances; AFAIK, Vodafone and Google are exchanging messages, for example.

Of course you could implement a full RCS client in your own app, deregister RCS in the Google Messenger app and then interface with your server of choice that way. However, this is significantly more work than just accessing the normal text messages on a phone. You'd also need to implement Google's extensions on top of RCS yourself (like E2EE encryption) and set up some kind of notification system (because you can't poll a server or listen on a socket without getting killed in the background).

It's all theoretically possible, but it's a lot of work. This is one of the reasons why Signal decided to drop SMS support all together in their app. Google could expose RCS messaging like they do text messaging, but they just... don't. Unless you're Samsung, of course; Samsung is allowed to call into the RCS APIs but other apps aren't.

Got it, thank you all for sharing your knowledge in this domain.

You are entirely correct.

Hey! Just wondering: how did you prevent Discord bans because of using their API without the Discord app?

A bit disappointed to see the only message mentioning the primary app here is a bad review, so I though I'd chime in and say we (I and three friends) absolutely love it. It's the only app with such versatility, with almost 24h support, and it's getting better every week, on every platform. The UI is really nice for an invite-only product. Your review is mainly based on SMS, which is a fraction of what the app can do. Congrats to the team, keep up the great work !

I hadn’t heard of Beeper but it looks incredible. And since they are also people who work on side projects like these, I know I can trust them.

Unfortunately, seems like there is a waitlist of some 177k people for new signups.

I'm a huge fan of Squarofumi. I've bought two Watchy kits and have absolutely loved coding all kinds of interesting things for them. Given that it's powered by ESP32, it makes development super easy.

Thanks!

To borrow from Jerry Maguire: you had me at physical qwerty.

Hey SQFMI here! Happy to answer any questions :)

How did you manage to keep the BOM so low. Very impressed!

Low margins :) This is a passion project and we wanted to make it accessible

Well done! Its just so hard to keep costs low.

This looks quite epic!

Is this an original used blackberry keyboard or a new one build specifically for this?

Who owns the trademark for this blackberry icon nowadays? Is there risk that a random company owning the trademark will sue you?

As you're going to see in this thread everyone wants to turn this into it's own device. Personally I think it's great for field work, I'd like to see a GPS module, lora, and a solar panel.

Given that everyone wants a slightly different hardware customization I'd just like to say I think if you do a version 2 you should seriously consider having some kind of standard expansion cards system. Something like arduino/rpi "shields" of adafruit feather's "wings"?

Stemma/ Quiic would be absolutely insane

Are you the same people behind Watchy? Very cool!

https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy

Yes! We made Watchy as well, we love open source hardware :)

It looks absolutely awesome. Congratulations on the launch. This is exactly the kind of thing I'd like to play with.

Also, I find the actual BB keyboard better to type code in as I can get some tactile feedback (swipe is too imprecise for my fingers).

I would love to hook this up to a LoRa receiver and use it around town, will be fun to hack on.

I recommend the PineDio USB LoRA adapter from Pine64! https://pine64.com/product/pinedio-usb-lora-adapter/

Lovely little thing. When you start selling cases as well, please can you set up a mailing list or post again when you start sending including case? Without case I am sure I won’t use it (blew up far too much stuff with static electricity in my life).

Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/sqfmi and join our Discord https://discord.gg/QERrSferdF ! We'll share the latest updates on Beepberry development there.

I'm surprised you don't push people towards open standards like an email newsletter or a Matrix channel. Twitter? Discord?

Good idea! Maybe we should start a newsletter. There is a Matrix bridge to our Discord now.

An RSS feed would be great too. After Twitter's acquisition, I'm leaning more heavily than ever on RSS, despite being a former hardcore Twitter user.

I could see the BeepBerry being very cool for RSS and email too.

Makes me curious: is there an open firmware for old Blackberries? As I feel like it could be just as interesting to play around with that (at the bare metal level, I mean; just writing apps for the Blackberry OS isn’t too interesting.)

Not that I’ve seen. The hacker/tinkerer community never adopted BlackBerry the way they did iOS or Android (or even Palm or Windows Mobile) and the BlackBerry focus on security (putting aside giving foreign governments BBM keys for a minute) meant that unlocking bootloaders on the BBOS and QNX BB10 devices would be more challenging than other phones of that vintage, since a huge selling point to IT admins was that it was safe to put these things on your network.

Obviously someone could jailbreak the bootloaders with enough effort, but I very much doubt many of the components would have drivers in the Linux kernel (the Bold 9900 which was the most powerful BBOS device ever released I think had a Snapdragon SoC and Qualcomm really doesn’t like to open up its drivers) and the effort involved in even trying would almost certainly be more trouble than it was worth.

Seems to only mention Zero W directly, but would a Zero 2 W also work? Kind of expecting it would but thought it better to check

Yup! It should be a drop-in alternative. Other SBCs should also work but requires a bit more tinkering with the software.

I believe it would, as they said in another comment that anything that fits the Zero W form factor would work, and the Zero 2 W has the exact same layout.

Love the idea but a Zero W is pretty underwhelming. I have couple and it’s barely useful because of the single core limitations. I’m guessing it’s a supply chain issue?

Also, does this have to work with beeper? What if I have my own synapse running?

People have built essentially the same idea before but used the far more powerful Pi CM4 boards, which aren't really that much bigger at all than the Zero:

https://www.clockworkpi.com/uconsole

That said, I ordered a uConsole when it was announced and have heard nothing, I should really chase this...

My guess is the decision here to use a Zero wasn't one of availability, they sell it without a Zero too so you can roll your own. There is probably less complexity in using the Zero's GPIO support to attach to the host device vs the CM4's much more complex pin out which may have been a bigger factor.

Wow the Devterm looks amazing. Unfortunately according to reviews, the quality is extremely subpar. I get it’s niche but at that price, it’s probably a better financial design to get an iPad mini with a small keyboard.

Yep, I weighed the risk of the poor Devterm reviews when deciding to preorder the uConsole. My hope is with the uConsole being a simpler device with a traditional 4:3 display etc there will be more scope to just treat it like a plain ole Linux computer, but absolutely it's a niche toy for me too - neither of the devices make financial sense as a work tool!

I also love the design of the Devterm and would absolutely have bought one if reviews were better.

I have a DevTerm R-01 and it is basically a beautiful $200 novelty cyberdeck that sits on my desk. The R01 version in particular is greatly under powered and is really only usable with twm and a Xterm.

I mostly use it to read gopher:// and the kids love printing things off using it's thermal printer.

How is the keyboard? I have pretty small hands and it does not look like I can use it comfortably.

It's not great but not absolutely horrible. Two-finger typing most of the time and the overall feel is stiff, but not too stiff.

I usually hold it with my hands and use my thumbs, like a Game Gear. Re-mapping the "d-pad" joystick and "yxba" buttons to arrow keys and hjkl [1] makes it easy to read and navigate text content on it (hence of gopher://), especially with the wide and high resolution screen.

1. https://forum.clockworkpi.com/t/mapping-devterm-r-01-gamepad...

It's size is what turned me off most about the devterm. I would be much more tempted by a device just a bit bigger. This[1] blog post has good pictures, one next to a DVD case for size comparison.

[1] https://www.talospace.com/2022/05/mini-review-clockwork-pi-d...

The hardware quality is actually decent. The software support isn’t unless you get the pi version. I’ve owned two. First, the A04 and then the R-01. I actually used the A04 frequently, until I bought a SteamDeck. I’ve since sold it. I would use the R01 more if the HDMI out worked.

Clockwork will ship, it takes them some time. The software support isn’t great, and the community does a lot of the heavy lifting.

I’m waiting for a uConsole too. Here’s the latest shipping update: https://forum.clockworkpi.com/t/update-uconsole-shipping-rel...

It's basically impossible to get any Pis these day - we were able to score a bunch of Pi Zero W so that's what we're including for now, but it's fully compatible with any 'zero' form factor SBC.

Works great with your own synapse too!

I hear your pain, I’ve been trying to get a zero 2W for a reasonable price for almost 3 years now. It’s so disappointing how it’s still an issue today.

Super tempted to try one of these out since I run my own synapse anyway. Paired with tailscale running, I could do a lot with it on the fly but probably would need a Zero 2W to handle everything I’m imagining.

The Zero and Zero 2 are both coming into stock on almost a daily basis now if you follow rpilocator. Things seem to slowly be getting better.

Looks like my Blackberry and my KeyOne with that keyboard. I like small dedicated things like this. I have a BT keyboard the size of a credit card I bought in Shenzen in 2012 that still works great with tiny joystick with a small thumb rubber pad on it.

I am currently using a Numworks calculator with color screen for fun small projects with the latest Omega OS for it. Python scripts, GB stuff, etc. I also do engineering/technical work, so the Numworks is used for both business and pleasure!

Non-hacker here. Is there any possibility of this being made into a non-touchscreen 5G/4G-VoLTE phone that can be carried in a pocket without damage?

It should be possible to alter the case to support a slide cover, like for graphing calculators: slide it off, put in on the back when in use. slide it off, put it on the front when not in use. It should be resistant to puncture damage to the screen and prevent keypresses.

For LTE modules, as long as you have USB, you are able to connect one. If you want 5G, check the Qualcomm SDX55 and SDX65 (submm wave + 5G SA) on Telit. The easiest way is to get a Telit EVB + a Cinterion module.

The only difficulty would be routing the audio pathways and maybe IMS registration for VoLTE, but you could use a Quectel EG25 like on the pinephone: the module can be controlled by AT commands and the existing work for audio routing could help you get started: check https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro and the audio part of https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html like https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/audio-pp.html#toc-voice-call...

I said, "non-hacker" :D

Thanks, though.

If someone wants to turn this into a cell-phone product with a finished case (importantly not 3d printed with odor- or toxin-emitting plastic), audio, etcetera, I'd buy at least one, as long as it could be added to an MVNO plan.

With lora support, it would make for a nice off the grid communication device.

can lora work p2p? or needs a powered router somewhere

https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction

Awesome, just bought two :-)

Trying to determine if this is really more hackable than an actual BlackBerry 957. This appears to have the keyboard from the BlackBerry Classic, where the straight-across rows were not very desirable. The real BlackBerry 957 is a 386 with 512KB of RAM, a serial port, and a battery life measured in weeks. As a "for hackers" device it is hard to beat.

What interesting things can you do with a 957 at present?

Can it run a Matrix client at present?

I like it! But I wouldn‘t buy it… What I would totally buy, is a HHKB keyboard with a Raspberry inside, as the ols home computers. Like the R Pi 400, but with a MX keyboard, and HHKB layout…

@sqfmi is there any chance that we might/could get a blackberry client for beeper? it would give all those old blackberrys sitting in drawers a new life and might actually help with growth of beeper as well.

Very cool! I was just recently feeling that I have LCD fatigue, and wondered what it would be like to have a mobile computing device with a similar screen as a Nokia from 20 years ago.

Can I ask why you copied the classic Blackberry keyboard almost entirely? Even the symbol on the "Menu" button is BB's. There are keyboard phone OEMs like Unihertz that specifically changed their keyboard design to not resemble BB so as to avoid patent disputes.

This is almost certainly an actual BlackBerry keyboard. There have been a number of recent hobbyist projects using them, I don't know if they're old parts lying around warehouses or gutted from unsold phones... but they're out there.

The screens from the BlackBerry Q5 are also being used in Game Boy Colors now for a nice upgrade. Not sure how they source those either.

Honestly, this form factor is exactly what I'm looking for in an Android keyboard.

I'd love an external, tactile keyboard like this that lets me see the text before it is sent to the Android host as input. If you could enable bluetooth keyboard functionality as a feature, and support typing in multiple languages too (mine are English, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and Greek) then I'll be the first to order.

Looks like teenage engineering pocket operators :)

Coincidentally, I finally got my Watchy set up today. Though the case is bulky enough that I might take it out and just use a NATO strap.

Excellent idea. Am close to ordering.

You say e-paper, but the technical drawing “Sharp Memory LCD” which sounds different to me.

And it would be great to have a case, or a 3d file.

STL for the case https://beepberry.sqfmi.com/docs/enclosures

e-paper != e-ink (which is a specific type of e-paper)

so, if e-paper != e-ink is e-paper "a digital screen you can read text on" ? or.. I'm confused. (actual question not being a jerk)

I, too expected an e-ink screen and was disappointed to find it was an LCD.

Wikipedia seems to think that e-paper and e-ink are in fact the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

I read it as the screen maintains the last contents written and generally operates with low power requirements while screen content is not being written. Per the data sheet, to have the screen in a state where it gets all of its pixels written once every 30 seconds, it consumes 135μW of power.

https://beepberry.sqfmi.com/docs/enclosures

Great to see that you're still exploring hardware, Eric! I'm definitely planning to get one of these, but as some others have mentioned, I might attempt to convert it into a LoRa peer-to-peer communicator. Currently, I rely on MestTastic relays, which can be quite cumbersome due to the need for an iPhone or Android device.

This seems super cool; have you considered selling a model with a battery and case? I would think that would be far more useful to most?

It comes with a battery. No case included for now, but you can 3D print your own with the STL files. Later on we will offer 2 cases (CNC aluminum and plastic).

Very cool project. How is the battery life?

We haven't done extensive testing or optimizations (i.e. sleep, idle power down, etc.) yet. But with the stock battery of 2000mAh and Pi Zero @ ~80mA idle, it should be around ~20h always on. We're estimating a week of battery life once the optimizations are implemented.

That's fantastic. I read in another comment that the startup time of the Pi is 5 seconds. Could this be optimized further? Afaik most of the startup time of Linux is detecting and initializing the hardware, so presumably this could be significantly optimized when the target hardware is known ahead of time.

I'm also sort of disillusioned with modern computing when I see a video of a home computer from the 80s that you press the power button and it's on (command prompt) before you've even removed your finger!

This is amazing! A hacker friendly Cybiko/TwitterPeek with the power of Matrix. Feels like the ultimate chat device.

I miss the Cybiko, it was ahead of it's time and was so much fun to play with. They can still be found on eBay.

I miss it too! Ya know what can't be found on ebay (or even IRL when new)? Other people nearby to play games with.

Those things were so cool!

Get the Beepberry and play games with friends across the globe (via WiFi)!

LCD and e-paper are different things. E-paper keeps its content without power.

You are using both terms. What is it you are using?

There is no legal definition of e-paper, but I have been using this term for over a decade to refer to Memory LCD and it's worked out fine. This definition nitpicking is getting oooooold https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3828249

No this nitpicking is people wanting to know the specs of something they might buy. What most people on HN probably think of as e-paper is not the same as and LCD tech.

Part of the problem is there's some use of e-paper to mean "e-ink but we don't want to trigger their trademark lawyers" polluting the space. (The part of the description that actually made sense to me was where it said "same display tech as in Pebble!" ... which is pretty neat, and not-at-all-eink...)

Almost every single reader will assume you’re talking about a completely different technology with significantly different properties. That’s not nitpicking, that’s reality check.

(It’s not very papery in appearance, either. All up, I don’t know how best to convey the type of display that it is, but e-paper ain’t it.)

Sharp “Memory LCD” is just reflexive LCD with SRAM(?) bits integrated to pixels. Visually more cold in tone than typical displays, somewhat of black chrome on satin. Agreed that calling them “e-paper” is a loose usage of the term as it does require power to hold display content.

> E-paper keeps its content without power

You're thinking of e-ink. e-paper has always been used to describe this type of low power LCD screen. I first came across the terminology with the Pebble watches.

I cannot think of ever having encountered “e-paper” being used to refer to any kind of LCD, but I’ve come across it being used to certainly refer to electrophoretic displays many times, and that’s all I obviously find by a general web search too.

(Pebble? I dunno, I thought they used e-ink. Never saw one in person. If it is not so, I’m curious whether they ever used e-ink, or whether it was an extremely widespead misunderstanding through all of their history.)

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Just snagged one. Can't wait to play with it.

A lot pricier of course but there's https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor too for the same kind of uses this is for.

A predecessor to this concept: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipit_wireless_messenger_(Z2...

Does this have any relation to https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor 's comms app?

It does not, but both use the same display technology https://sharpdevices.com/memory-lcd/

The refresh rate for that epaper screen is better than I thought it would be. Might not be a bad device for quick admin work for the homelab.

Will it work with a pi zero 2 and how is this type of screen under lowlight conditions?

It’s not epapper

works great with pi zero 2. Needs a front-light to see in low light.

I continue to await my beeper invite, but this looks great. I have been itching to tinker with e-ink for a while and this seems like a great entry point. Cheers, I'm in for $99!

It's an LCD, poor titling.

FYI the FAQ page gets a 404: https://beepberry.sqfmi.com/docs/FAQ

Ordered, should be a fun device to hack on. There's already some hacky e-ink projects I've go I'd like to port to this form factor.

I think it would be more helpful to call it a pre-order on the button. If I click "order now", I'd expect it in 6 weeks, max.

A fancy expensive version of this concept exists as the Precursor. All open, built off of some FPGAs, though with a much bigger security focus

What is the possibility of connecting a GSM module and using this for making and receiving calls and staying connected on the go?

4G modules with calling are incredibly power hungry, and take ages to get a fix typically from a cold boot. Even just basic data NB-IoT ones use heaps of power.

Nit about the website: Tiny little youtube videos with a condescending: "Full screen is unavailable. Find out more"

At least it's only $99.

Sadly, it's not a shipping product yet. It's a "preorder".

Looks very good. Can we have a more polished version? And please remove the blackberry logo from the keypad.

Looks like it might be an actual blackberry keyboard.

This sound like one of the millions of gadgets that are just made for the heck of it and ends up in a drawer after being used for a week.

This is just e-waste in the making.

I don't see it as a positive thing. Unless you are one of the very few who still don't own a mobile phone or use a very limited one, you already own a portable networked terminal.

On the other hand, if you do actually want a small screen and a tactile keyboard for an RPi Zero, this looks like a nice package.

Do you know how many people are buying smart tooth brushes for their kids to ignore, digital picture frames that there parents don't use, and smart appliances they use once a year? This is a drop in the ocean.

So if people are doing shitty thing it makes it ok to do it yourself as well?

How cool is that! Pebbltastic!

Could someone tell me how many hours of battery life you could get out of it?

When will we get a tiny Linux handheld with 1 or 2 GB RAM and a couple of cores? Any core, I mean. RISC-V my favorite, but anything else in the 32-bit range would be ok too. I mean a real battery-operated product I can slip in my pocket. NOT a smartphone, though.

This is ridiculously cool!

Ordered. Nuff said :)

If we order it, can we get access to beeper lol

Sad to see such a cool project using Discord.

Thanks!

Ordered two.

Love the form factor but Pi Zero W is a no go, tinkering or not.

Stuff like this fuels my deep disappointment with the way smartphones are being treated. So powerful, yet locked down. Need legislation to fix incredible waste because clearly capitalism, by itself, won't.

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