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Comment by ideasphere | Hacker News Reader

Cyberdecks are nice for photos and build blog posts, but does anyone actually regularly use them?

Been working on a handheld cyberdeck with a good thumb keyboard. I'm masochistic enough to write entire projects on my smartphone with vim running inside termux, so I think anything that improves on this will certainly be used.

Measured my thumb's swiping arc and designed a split keyboard specifically for my hands. Managed to get every symbol in there with no layers. Now I just need to save up some money and order protypes so I can get a feel for the switches. Can't move forward until I've perfected the keyboard.

Are you documenting the process anywhere? Also dying for a good thumb keyboard someday.

Personally, I'm repurposing an older HTC phone with slide-out keyboard (the Speedy) with a new Linux port.

For general compute they will lose to a laptop, but that isn't supposed to be their purpose. I think the best use cases require extra hardware that would make a laptop too bulky or awkward. For example a deck with a VNA, SDR, scope, and arbitrary waveform generator for field work with radio equipment. The traditional computer capabilities are sort of extra. Any sort of diagnostic "cart" with a dedicated computer and a bunch of test equipment could be a candidate for miniaturization.

I'm imagining a computer set up for DJing with big-ass speakers on the outside top lid, and a bunch of analog controls on either side of the keyboard, and a heavy battery.

That's not only possible, but was done to death in the early 2000s during the heyday of car audio components, "home theater" PCs, iPods, and finally good enough laptops.

If you built one of those you were automatically the DJ after school, at the skate park, etc. You better believe those SLA batteries were heavy.

The modern equivalant is the all-in-one karaoke machine :)

> "For example a deck with a VNA, SDR, scope, and arbitrary waveform generator for field work with radio equipment."

Any real world examples? I don't think that's plausible from a RFI, power, heat, or just plain fragility perspective even with the cheapo hobbyist instruments suitable for kitbashing and only energizing a couple of instruments a time.

There's a bunch of SDR cyberdecks, there's a few that both lots more.

Take a look at this one:

https://hackaday.io/project/174301-raspberry-pi-sdr-cyberdec...

Or this one:

https://hackaday.io/project/192016-the-obsium-cyberdeck

Or take a look at what saveitforparts does on youtube

An RTL-SDR for the SDR and a Raspberry Pi Pico based "oscilloscope" just reinforces the extent to which these devices aren't practical.

The two non computer device I use today are my digital audio player (DAP) and my ereader. If I have the time and money, that would be the kind of specialized tasks that I could design a cyberdeck towards. The laptop form factor is quite nice for computing although I would like more direct ports than USB which is complex for experimentation.

They're interactive art projects!

Idk if it merits being called a cyberdeck, but i use my rickety suitcase tablet+keyboard+mouse (+ powerbank) setup which I VNC from to my house computers mainly. One of the reasons is local LLMs being often impractical to run directly in my laptop, especially as I also do other things. Before that I didn't use it as much. Sometimes I just put the laptop and the mouse in the suitcase, mainly because I find the trackpad virtually unusable for VNC, particularly for copy-paste.

The ideal "cyberdeck" form factor is just a regular laptop. So to the extent that a macbook pro counts as a cyberdeck, yes.

Technically, a real cyberdeck is a VR rig with no screen.

This fad is more about making custom cases for hardware.

I got a ClockworkPi uConsole and am not really using it much, and that’s because it’s become very hard for me to read on the high dpi small screen for too long.

More of a fun Maker project for sure

no, they're plastic crap for kickstarter photos. not designed for human hands.

They once existed (see Sony Vaio P 2nd gen; coolest thing in the universe) but modern OEMs no longer have such taste.

I always wanted one of the tiny form factor laptops but during that period I had a specific need for a real non-usb hardware serial port and instead bought a laptop that actually had one which was very strange (2009 maybe?)

GPD makes several devices that come close to the old compact Vaios. I have the GPD Win Mini and it's a pretty capable machine - 32GB RAM, 2TB storage, RDNA 3.5 gfx, built-in gamepad, full set of ports.

The keyboard is surprisingly usable, although of course nowhere close to that of a laptop, but still usable for short periods. I got a fully fleshed out Arch gaming setup (manual install) and I use it on a regular basis like a Steam Deck and just a portable dev/test machine at work.

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