Lilygo T-Deck: 2.8-inch IPS LCD display, mini keyboard, and ESP32 processor | Hacker News Reader

Lilygo T-Deck: 2.8-inch IPS LCD display, mini keyboard, and ESP32 processor

lilygo.cc

212 pointsCharlesW116 comments

At the risk of being shouted down, this is another one of those products that looks great on impulse buy, but when you try to use that tiny keyboard and screen to do any real work with it, the chore of use becomes apparent. I developed my own version using a Featherwing Keyboard awhile back. As much as our brains want to compare it to the old Blackberry we once had, trying to write a quick sketch is so much different than sending the occasional sms with that keyboard. It was a clunky, cramped experience to say the least.

I have used BlackBerry phones extensively when they were all the rage, and I was more productive on their keyboards than I ever was on any smartphone keyboard, Android or iOS, that came after.

I definitely did not share your experience. Still don't with modern touch screen keyboards, which I am currently forced to use. I'd love to chalk it up to having large hands, but that is not the case, as my hands are not big by any standards. I've never felt it was natural to type with one or two thumbs, but we tend to trick ourselves into thinking this is fine because, lets be honest, what's the alternative? We can't all whip out a folding keyboard every time we want to send a text on our mobile.

That said, when it comes to making a lilliputian computer/microcomputer, there are physical limitations to design if we want to keep typing with our 8 fingers as the keyboard gods intended, so I understand the resurgence of the Blackberry-esque keyboard for pocket devices. I just can't call it a comfortable way to compute.

Same, FWIW. Just the other day I was thinking how it would be great if we could get back to real keyboards, now that smartphones have gotten so big, we have options for folding screens, etc. The pure touchscreen format made sense in the days of iPhone 1, but I'm not sure it still does today.

I would agree. I make more mistakes on virtual keyboards for sure. I really enjoyed the original Motorola Droid [0] with slide out keyboard. Not only was the slider mechanism and keyboard excellent, but it didn't impact the portability of the phone at all.

If we could get an updated phone in that exact form factor with vanilla Android support it would be very popular. Physical keyboard, removable battery, mSD card slot and headphone jack. All the things consumers "don't want" anymore. /s

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid

Phones with QWERTY keyboards are still made, but unfortunately they're produced in such limited quantity that they're not built with high-end SoCs.

The F(x)tec Pro¹ and the Unihertz Titan just don't take off enough to warrant big investments. There's a group of Android users who prefer physical keyboards (that I too belong to as well), but it's small.

Even when physical keyboard died, people sold QWERTY keyboard covers and cases for some smartphones (I think the S6 Edge was the last one with an official keyboard?) but even those have died out because of lack of interest.

In theory, all you need to add a sliding keyboard to a modern Android phone is a corner USB-C connector and a sufficiently sized case. Someone skilled with 3D printing and circuit board design may just be able to build one for their phones if they can get their hands on the keyboards themselves...

I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this with my phone when traveling but it’s hard to find a good quality keyboard that is small enough and reasonable quality, while also being worth the additional hassle compared to a folding keyboard. One “least worst” possibility might be using low profile Cherry MX style switches and keys for a small and light 60% keyboard that has a USB cable and slot for the phone to sit in.

I haven’t used the pine phone and its keyboard but I’d love it if such an option was available for iPhones and run of the mill android phones.

Yeah, I think this is for you iff you actually want a weird little messenger. Play around with LORA or some mesh network thing, but it will never be a "look, oh I have a homebrew PDA that I actually use"

I agree, having owned (among others) a Psion 5mx and a Nokia N900 in the past. You could write full docs, compile C programs or write papers in LaTeX on a pocket device, in theory. In practice of course, I never did when the novelty wore off after a few tries.

> At the risk of being shouted down, this is another one of those products that looks great on impulse buy, but when you try to use that tiny keyboard and screen to do any real work with it, the chore of use becomes apparent.

I purchased one on impulse after this HN post, and some notes so far:

* Keyboard is a hell of a lot smaller than expected. I have small fingers and even this is a bit of a challenge for me. I very much doubt anybody will be coding on this thing. I am thinking mostly to use it as a way of making brief notes and reading RSS feeds.

* The screen is fine, it's something you can live with.

* I installed tulipcc on it (micropython), definitely the right choice to getting started on it quickly.

* I tried to print a case [2] but my printer is not good enough, I think I will send them off to China to be printed on an SLA printer.

[1] https://github.com/bwhitman/tulipcc

[2] https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6287501

HAMs are using it as a MeshCom terminal: https://icssw.org/en/meshcom/

Halfway through this video is an example, contrast it with the iOS app shown before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWtqm7lbYoo

This is a deeper dive into specifically the T-Deck and Meshtastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1hvsYEX7WE

Lilygo were the ones to make the device the original meshtastic was built on (T-Beam)

I have their T-Echo and several T-Beam and T-Display-S3. I'm pretty happy with them so far, but have to admit that none of my projects is finished and so far I just have been playing around.

I'm based in Germany and delivery from their German warehouse was pretty fast, some parts came from China but didn't take much longer.

They don't ship batteries though so you have to get them elsewhere. This was a bit of a challenge for me because I had no prior experience with industrial type batteries and the market is confusing. I was also afraid of fakes that, in the worst case, explode in my face or burn my place down. I finally ordered some from the Netherlands which have not exploded so far.

Anyways, I learned a ton for next to no money, so I can definitely recommend the devices mentioned above for educational purposes.

>> have to admit that none of my projects is finished and so far I just have been playing around

No-one ever uses the microcontrollers they buy and they certainly don’t finish projects - that would be breaking the laws of nature.

No, we buy these devices because we like the idea of making a project with them and enjoy the satisfaction that hitting the “buy” button gives.

When the item is delivered (only a 50/50 chance if you bought it from Aliexpress), put it safely in a drawer and think happily about how your project would work if you ever did it. Which you won’t. You will feel an ongoing warm glow from your accumulated collection of microcontrollers and oddball electronics that you’ve bought and you’ll marvel at how little it cost to buy so much computing power that you’ll never use.

You watch makers on YouTube to vicariously see projects finished. Then you get inspired and buy. Then you put it in a drawer. Then you go back to watching makers on YouTube. It’s the cycle of maker life.

This is the content I come here for.

That's exactly how it works.

Oof. Harsh but fair.

This just saved many people years of therapy and self-doubt.

Depressing but completely accurate. As Warren Zevon said, "We love to buy books because we believe we're buying the time to read them."

Haha, I call it Gadget Tsundoku but I am sure there is separate word for it in Japanese.

This entire thread was very educational -- I learned a lot about myself :)

> only a 50/50 chance if you bought it from Aliexpress

I've been buying electronic modules from AliExpress for years and have never not received my order.

Lilygo makes a ton of really fun ESP32 dev boards. I've used various ones in projects and it is pretty crazy what you can get for not much money. They are constantly churning out new, weird form factors: https://www.lilygo.cc/collections/new

I'm building a macro keyboard (4 keys) and was looking for keypads with a display for ages. It seems they are doing it !

This might be relevant to your interests:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/keyyyyyyyys/

I consider this post a birthday present and didn't even try to resist the buy-instantly-reflex..

BUT. What I'm still missing is an audio jack. I've been searching for a long time now for a device of this mobile friendly form factor (i.e. battery support), with a couple of buttons and knobs, a small display and audio in/out.

Like a TE Pocket Operator, but fully programmable (using typical C++/Rust/Micropython programming environments).

I'd really love to deep dive into rapid prototyping some audio generator or effect processor I can take with me, but don't want to design and build a device for this first.

Maybe you guys have seen something like this before and can give me a hint?

Yeah it should have audio.

Next best is using Bluetooth, depending on what you’re trying to build.

Just add one yourself? I mean it even has a speaker cable. That said an esp32 isn't that good for audio just from a practical standpoint.

> That said an esp32 isn't that good for audio just from a practical standpoint.

What are the problems with it for audio? The microphones and speaker on this and the T-Embed [1] suggest it's partly intended for that.

[1] https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-embed

My recollection is that by default the ESP32 DAC isn't very high bit depth and so the sound quality is limited. It is recommended to interface it with an external DAC chip via I2S in order to achieve higher than 8bits per sample (maybe 12bit? Someone please correct me).

yes it hasn't really got a dedicated sound out and an i2c chips is absolutely needed. I meant more because while is absolutely possible to play say an mp3 on it its simple not a thing it does too easily in a useful manner in a multi-application device context.

I mean you can absolutely build a shoutcast stream receiver with it. Or run a NES emulator with sound on it. But this ttgo device seem like it would be best as a console or maybe a mastodon front-end. In that case the most the speaker would make sense for would be some beeps.

Correct. Configuring it to route audio through an external I2S DAC instead is trivial. ISTR that it's literally 3 lines of code.

The esp32 has i2s[1] and there are a variety of i2s DAC chips for very reasonable prices. Amazon has what looks like a reasonable low-cost choice, the PCM5102 breakout board for $12 [2]

1. https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32/... 2. https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Lossless-Digital-Converter-Ra...

Or $3 (on sale) from AliExpress [1].

[1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006104038963.html?spm=a2...

The ESP32 also has two onboard 8-bit DACs. But I agree, a 16-bit I2S DAC is a better choice for high quality audio. I built a streaming audio receiver for a custom car stereo with them and it sounds amazing.

I wonder how many people buy such products once it's displayed on the frontpage of HN.

I would wager both more and less than you think.

The total amount of readers is probably higher than you think, 80% are lurkers.

The total amount of purchasers ass a percentage is probably lower than average, due to cynacism and skeptacism.

There are numerous $50-100 Rockchip-based GameBoy-like emulation handhelds on the market, such as the R36S. The R36S runs normal Linux (ArkOS/Ubuntu), has an audio jack along with numerous buttons. It's missing a touchscreen and WiFi, but has an USB port to plug in a keyboard or WiFi adapter (USB port is somewhat current limited, so it won't work with all).

https://wiphone.io/ is Arduino compatible and comes with an audio jack and microphone. It's also completely enclosed, knows how to charge it's own battery, etc. Phone form factor, ESP32 processor.

The back of the phone can be replaced with a custom PCB or breadboard holding your custom hardware. Pogo pins make a connection to the motherboard. The idea is you could carry whatever you end up making around in your pocket just like a phone once you're done, assuming you only put components on the inside of the back cover.

Disclosure: I designed and manufacture it.

Take a look at the Woovebox. A great example of what a lone dev can do with esp32

I got way in to Meshtastic when I was doing some group backwoods camping in national parks. Satellite was really the only other option at the time for long range, highly reliable communication and is so expensive! I got some t-beams and was super impressed by how well they worked. The interface at the time was very clunky and the software was in its infancy. In practice the devices were only usable in the context of showing their GPS location/distance from each other because the iOS support was specifically non-existent. That said I wanted them just to make sure if someone was gone for a long time, you’d know if they were okay by proxy of them moving and be able to find them if needed. It worked for that as a bare device.

The software has come a long way and I’ve been really impressed even though I haven’t been in a situation to take advantage of it again. I’ve got one of these on order though because it just tickles me.

I've also used Meshtastic a bunch for backcountry stuff, and coming from vhf/uhf radios, I gotta say I fucking love nonsynchronous comms in that setting.

Being able to set my phone down and go filter water or whatever, then come back to a text message that the other group made the pass and will be there in an hour (or, like you said, just their moving arrow), is so much nicer in practice than having to monitor an analog voice channel. That wasn't really a benefit I was expecting when getting into it, but it's one of my favorite aspects in actual usage.

I will gladly put up with some level of jank (2/11 t-beams have unressurectably died mysteriously over time) for that kind of QoL improvement. (That said, I still carry a backup ht)

The Meshtastic iOS app is fantastic. Many commercial apps could take a leaf out of their book.

(I cannot speak for Android because I never tried it.)

Along the same lines, has anyone here tried their T-watch product?

https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-watch-s3

I have the T-Watch 2020 collecting dust on the shelf.

Biggest downside is the battery which can't last a single day (and has to be charged through USB micro port with a flimsy plastic cap). The "speaker" and microphone are both very low quality. Other than that the hardware works as advertised. It's a complete ESP32 device in a very small form factor that could be repurposed as home automation interface.

Software support is quite bad. The arduino examples are mostly useful to confirm the HW is working. The provided OS with UI and gestures is not robust or pretty. It's best to drop to the toolchain that espressif provides, and there are some repositories that make this easy. Last I saw, there's no good foundation to start writing "apps" on top off, you have to treat it as bare metal embedded system and start from scratch. This is where I shelved it, after about two weeks of board bring-up with MicroPython and C++.

Is that battery life based on screen-on time, or standby time? Wondering if that can be optimized in any way.

I had one of those (maybe not the S3) and it stayed in a drawer because I realized I don't have the time, inclination, or skills to basically write an entire OS for it.

You can turn this into a pocket "lisp machine" by following the instructions on http://www.ulisp.com/show?4JAO - although I don't think this can make use of the LoRa interface (yet).

The hardware is cool, but its just a PCB and the edges of the display are vulnerable. I would recommend 3D printing a case to protect it, especially if you are planning to bring it around with you. There are .stp files for one in the official github repo.

You can also do Forth, which does support lora

https://arduino-forth.com/article/FORTH_FlashForth_LoRa_TheL...

It's relatively straightforward to build this out with an SPI screen using FabGL, not sure about the keyboard, though FabGL supports ps2.

The M5Stack Cardputer is another interesting device along these lines: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-cardputer-kit-w-m5...

(I don't have one of these, but I do have one of their other devices that seemed pretty nifty. Haven't done much with it yet, though.)

M5 kit isn't very reliable and their documentation site is down more often than it's up. Lilygo are good though.

I have to take issue with that. I shipped a bunch of devices based on M5Stack Tough for automotive use (in a truck) and feedback is that everything works great.

Gah, I just ordered one on impulse [1]. I've wanted to build out a WiFi PDA for quite some time now and I like this hardware.

I'm quite liking the idea of running tulip MicroPython [2] on it, or going back to pure MicroPython [3] and writing some drivers. Apparently something like ampy can be used to upload/download Python files [4].

Threads could be quite exciting for running multiple programs at once [5], although I have no idea what it means for two programs to fight over GPIO! It does seem as though MicroPython can only utilise a single core [6].

[1] https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-deck?variant=43087936487605

[2] https://github.com/bwhitman/tulipcc/tree/main/tulip/tdeck

[3] https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/esp32/tutorial/intro....

[4] https://www.digikey.co.uk/en/maker/projects/micropython-basi...

[5] https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/library/_thread.html

[6] https://github.com/micropython/micropython/issues/8197

It’s a great choice as a self-contained Lisp computer; see:

http://www.ulisp.com/show?4JAO

The ESp32 is many things - a suitable mobile battery powered uC is not one of them.

It has insane peak power draw from its radios, much more so than any other wifi uC, and it's horribly energy-inefficient when not sleeping.

out of curiosity, which wifi microcontrollers are better for battery life?

ESP8266 as a daughterboard on a real microcontroller like an STM32. Or a Nordic device like the nrf7002, but I haven’t used that personally.

Nordic Semiconductor nRF devices barely sip power. We did lots of wearable devices with BLE interface at my last job and Nordic was our go-to.

Sorry, I just realized you said wi-fi, not BLE.

The Lilygo/TYGO ESP-32 boards I've used also have horrible battery life while deep sleeping (which is a bummer because they put out some cool boards that seem ALMOST perfect for battery use cases)

The chip itself is fine.

If you have the wrong board it will be bad. You need to pay attention to the power supply on the board.

I've got a weather display (epaper, refreshes every hour) that I need to charge every 18 months or so. If you find the right board they're pretty much perfect.

Do you have a link handy? I had trouble with an e-ink board from them that drew tens of milliamps when it was asleep (on a well optimized ESP-32 it should be more like dozens of microamps)

The firebeetle claims 10uA and from memory is pretty close on a tinycurrent, or the Unexpected Maker boards [0].

You might be able to fix your existing boards if you look at the schematic and remove any unnecessary draws (voltage measurement dividers and always on LEDs are a good place to start). To get into the <20uA range the board needs to have an LDO with a low quiescent draw though, and designed so you can shut down power to the eink driver.

0: https://esp32s3.com/index.html#boards

Thanks for the info! Do you know if it's still possible to do partial refreshes if you shut down the display in between updates? Or is best/required to do a full refresh every time you restore power?

I second that, I have an EzSBC ESP32 board [1] that wakes up twice a day to fetch data through WiFi and three standard mini 1.5V, non rechargeable batteries are still going strong after almost one year. The power supply stage is truly the most important bit when it comes to deep sleep power consumption.

[1]: https://www.ezsbc.com/product/esp32-breakout-and-development...

I've got a weather display

That seems very interesting. Got a link?

If I remember correctly there have also been a few bugs in M5Stack ESP32 APIs because of deep sleep not working, I'm thinking there's also a few underlying Esspressif API bugs.

This is one of the reasons I only use RAK WisBlock devices, which use the very low energy nRF52 chips, and are also truly industrial strength quality, and more flexible regarding many types of sensors etc. (and also have a nice small solar panel enclosure, if it fits your use case).

Can't beat 240MHz dual thread performance and certified wireless at $5 all-inclusive. There are plenty more proper solutions but none within the ballpark - at least until Espressif moves to investment recovery phase.

These are quite the enabler for emergency comms, and ham-style radio. I think this can be used for disaster.radio, and can be used for meshtastic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt6NOm0Gdy8

Andy Kirby has also been using it on the London Underground: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFT-lXvd9TA

It looks like the UK meshtastic 'network' uses 868MHz, using cheap Heltec boards like this (oled version) as base stations: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/404619594371

You also can easily connect your phone to the network via the Android or IOS app.

This is almost perfect for my needs (communication and location sharing in areas without phone signal.) But it's missing GPS/GNSS. I'm not sure how niche that use case is, so more broadly I wish Lilygo offered something akin to Raspberry Pi hats -- i.e. some way to add extensions.

This is the hardware that I wish Beepy had: https://beepy.sqfmi.com

By the way, does anyone know why all of these devices use the Arabic BlackBerry keyboard? Was there a particular surplus of this layout?

The Beepy is just as capable. The T-Deck is only serving as an interface to the Meshtastic LoRa node. A Beepy can run a Meshtastic companion app and connect over Bluetooth, just like the T-Deck.

Beepys have a pretty big issue with randomly shorting out due to a design flaw, according to the Discord forum anecdata. It happened to mine, unfortunately.

A very capable little device before it cooked itself, though—having a raspberry pi in your pocket is a lot of fun.

There is a fix for the U2 issue : https://beepy.space/t/shorted-tps61030-u2/21

Thank you for pointing this out. I had no idea. Seems like the kind of thing that all Beepy users should be made aware of.

But the backlit screen does make a difference in usability, one has to admit?

I received a Beepy with a plain US keyboard but uneven keyboard backlighting. When I ordered a new Q10 keyboard from AliExpress, I got one that was left half Arabic/English and right half US-English. My T-deck came with the Arabic one. Seems like there are a lot of Arabic parts out there.

Depends on what was shipped to you. I have the USA keyboard, others had Non-Arabic, Non-English ones IIRC.

It is weird how the moment I saw the words 'mini keyboard' in the title I knew the exact keyboard module they were using, because it's the one everyone uses.

Would it be possible to run some hack to get WhatsApp on it? (A tizen version or via a separate matrix server?)

It could be a great gift for early teenager asking for phone and justifying it with “missing out on chat with friends”

I think a locked down cheap phone would be a path of significantly lower resistance.

I wonder how long until RIM sues them. These are old stock blackberry keyboards and RIM has patents on them. Last time they killed a 3rd party keyboard for android phones.

The RIM copycat keyboards are mass produced and can be bought individually for DIY projects from places like AliExpress. So if anything, RIM should go after those Chinese makers. Of course good luck to Rim

Makes me want a blackberry again :(

I still point to Blackberry as a good example of 'good enough is about perfect' technology. There were always things that I might like to have that weren't there, but rarely was there a have to have that wasn't.

Nostalgia certainly hits hard! In the early 2000s, someone showed me how they ran an ssh terminal on their Blackberry. They were amazed how a device that size could do real work.

Is ESP32 enough for me if I want to SSH onto some machine?

yes. I ran ssh clients on the Original Palm pilots in the late 90s. This was way before ssh v2, which increased complexity a fair bit, but the processor here should be more than powerful enough for ssh.

For what it’s worth, if you’re interested in general-purpose computing, I was thinking of installing framebuffer DOSBox or something to get a nice Turbo Pascal hobbyist experience.

One of the commentators on the Lillygo page mentions that this is perfect hardware for "Meshcom"[0], which is "a project to exchange text messages via LORA radio modules."

This was the first use case that came to my mind, and MeshCom seems like a well-executed implementation.

[0]: https://icssw.org/en/meshcom/

Nice!

But I don't think qwerty keyboards are cool for tiny computers, I was experimenting with chord and even morse code keyboard https://punkx.org/calc for a mini computer with 0.96" display for my daughter, and its actually much better than those tiny buttons.

I think we have to challenge the input modes more.

How good is the keyboard? I want one of these Linux handhelds so much but they all have these clicky push button keyboards. This one looks different, like the old mobile phone physical keyboards which were actually usable.

> I want one of these Linux handhelds so much but they all have these clicky push button keyboards.

As someone who has programmed ESP32s, I doubt that they can run Linux. The ones I have (Risc-V versions) just don't have the RAM necessary, nor a memory management unit.

Maybe once they start coming with 32MB of RAM and an MMU it'll feasible to put a stripped-down Linux kernel on it.

Zephyr is similar to Linux inasmuch as a small RTOS can be. Runs on ESP32 pretty well and it's even a Linux foundation project.

To be fair, “as much as a small RTOS can be” means “not at all similar” from a perspective of someone who wants a Linux handheld with a keyboard.

640KB memory might be enough for everybody, but not for what most take for granted on Linux.

AFAICT it’s the BlackBerry keyboard a lot of other projects use.

Wish that uconsole handheld used it...

The ESP32 can't run Linux, not enough resources to run it, not even small ones such as OpenWRT and the like. You probably would be interested in something like the (now sadly dormant/dead) Pocket Popcorn Computer.

https://pocket.popcorncomputer.com/

https://community.popcorncomputer.com/

I'd love to see them, or some other company, resurrecting the concept.

Life comes at you fast

https://community.element14.com/challenges-projects/element1...

Still agree it's not a great idea for any practical purpose when once could just use an RPi instead. TBH one of the reasons I enjoy the ESP32 is not having to think about an operating system; it reminds me of hacking around on 8 bit home computers in the 1980s, only better.

I knew that someone did that (not the link you posted though) but I meant real world usable applications. Someone also managed to run Linux on a 8bit AVR microcontroller by writing a 32bit ARM emulator then adding an old SIMM memory module and a SD card for storage. Not real world usable as well, but that one brings the "because we can" concept to new levels:)

https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=07.+Linux+on+8bit

Looks really good but has the same silicone push button keyboard as the others...

For some reason, this thing comes with an Arabic keyboard. Which is pretty bad ass

They are likely using the easiest to source Blackberry keyboard they can find.

I wonder if these are still being produced or if there's just a really big stockpile somewhere - it's weird that they're still showing up so many years later.

porting my Zamek password manager to the T-Track now https://github.com/jareklupinski/zamek

i wonder where they get their hands on those little trackballs...

after Blackberrys went out, the only way to get any reasonable qty of them was to buy a plastic bag of like 200 from some random vendor; i was never able to get my hands on a steady supply to turn Zamek into a product :(

I guess the website was hug to death by the post ? I can't wait to have a look at this new ESP32 product, given the praise in the comments here.

It's this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005692235592.html

Is that a blackberry bold 9900 keyboard ?

Had one of those IRL and they were glorious.

Could this used as ssh terminal?

Not sure if there is a SSH client for the ESP32. But there is this that runs a raspberry pi zero w.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/beepberry-cures-lack-of-bla...

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