Messing with the Beepberry | Hacker News Reader

Messing with the Beepberry

jeffgeerling.com

68 pointsmikece19 comments

Looking forward to seeing more about the Beepberry. It's definitely something I had to resist the urge to buy, setup, and throw in a drawer. It appeals to the kind of tech user I'd like to be (Tinkery, detached, conscious) but not the one I think I am realistically (web zombie like so many others).

But… what is it? What does it do?

Is the point here just the novelty of a blackberry form factor wrapped around a pi?

Mostly, that. The group that made it also maintains Beeper [1], a messaging platform that unites a bunch of other messaging platforms using Matrix, so my guess is the intent is to use it as a messaging device.

For me... it's a fun little gadget that may or may not end up in my little novelty kit with the Flipper Zero, which can be useful in some scenarios, but is more for fun than utility.

[1] https://www.beeper.com/

Portable Zork console? You'd get loads of battery life out of it doing that, it leverages both the nice display and the keyboard, and it won't be sad if you take out into the real world where there's no wifi.

I can understand why someone would want beeper, but the current zen in me, after a burnout, denies it at all costs.

Imagine that: the possibility of having your wife, boss and mom at the same time requesting your services.

Do you guys not have phones?

I mean, it's a computer with a monitor and a keyboard built in. What doesn't it do is a more interesting question.

Looks like a great quick text input device for Apple Vision Pro.

Imagine looking at an input field and grabbing this off your utility belt and typing out some text

One thing that's not clear to me: does it actually run Beeper in any way?

Not out of the box, but it should be able to. I haven't tried yet.

The only thing that peaks my interest is the "LGA-style" connector for the raspi. Does anyone have photos of this or the part number?

It looks like it's a ton of individual LGA pins. I don't think they're intended for this exact purpose... but... they work. https://imgur.com/a/iLFtNGh

Is there any advantage to doing it this way over just using a compute module?

I could see that working well for emergency ssh too

Waiting for my 2 to arrive!

When did you order yours? It’s been almost a month since I ordered mine and it has had no sign of shipping.

Did I miss a notice that they’re behind or something?

They had 50 pre-release units, yours and mine should arrive sometime in August-September.

Yeah I must’ve completely glossed over the big “Shipping Notice” back when I ordered it.

In hindsight it was extremely noticeable so not sure how I missed it so completely.

I don't have anything constructive to add, but I'm bummed this peaked out at a paltry 19 points.

Blackberry was such a better overall UX than The Black Slab(tm)s of today.

No 5g === doomed, DOA in 2023 :(::::O.

Fuck.

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