I saw this complaint in another post online (paraphrased):
The screen and use of a Pi seem at odds with each other. The screen is ultra-low power, but there are of course huge drawbacks for usability. Meanwhile the CPU is very powerful, but chews through, comparatively, a lot of power quickly.
They argued that it would be better to either pair the Pi with a better screen for a more powerful/usable handheld, or go all in on longevity and use some kind of low-power chip to pair with the screen for a terminal that could last for days.
… I’ve got to say, it’s a fair point. A low power hand-held that could run Linux and run for days would be pretty cool, even if it was underpowered compared to a Pi. No idea what you could use for such a thing though.
Total newb question – don’t these CPUs support multiple clock speeds? You could set it high on install in preparation for compiling a bunch of software, then once you’re done, knock it down to 50% or less of the maximum to add longevity?
I really love the idea of carrying around something that’s more of a hard terminal like that and running basic communication services off a portable AP that I also carry around. I would love to separate out texting from internet device so that I’m not constantly looking at my phone.
I’m toying with the idea of pairing this through the gpio pins on the pi to an A9G 4G/GPS module and a battery. With voice, text, data and location, you could do anything. Bulky as heck by the time you encase it but it could be cool.
Can we even get zeros?
Adafruit was rolling through runs of ~70 per day for a while. First come first served. Dunno if they still are. I’d suggest setting up a stock alert with them.
I snagged one for my Beepy. They were so strict about scalpers they made me set up 2fa so they could verify my account.
Glad they’re doing something to verify you’re not a scalper.
That’s what I was thinking. I don’t think I’ve seen them available in the last 3 months.
I’m heading to England in September. I’ll pick up a few for you guys
If you’re near a microcenter they usually keep them hidden and you have to ask for them. But even when they’re hidden they sell out the day the shipment gets there.
Online will probably be a shit show forever thanks to scalpers.
It’s like a very early version of those “cyber decks” used in cyberpunk media. How long before we are using things like this to cut through Black ICE, trying not to fry our brains? 🤔
Kind of surprised it doesn’t have better battery life…
Incidentally, you’ll want to avoid draining the Beepy’s battery too deeply if you can help it — according to the schematics (and confirmed on my actual hardware) SQFMI have used a 10K resistor on the “programming” pin of the TP4054 charging IC. That sets the chip’s charge rate to a measly 100 mA, which means a full recharge of the battery would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 hours. It’s hard to believe this was intentional, and may be addressed on a later hardware revision.
Yeah, this is a really cool idea, but they need to flush it out a little more. analogue audio and faster charging would make it a lot more appealing
Bigger battery might not be a bad idea either, but I say that about everything.
Has me wondering if ever we’ll reach a state where we just have battery packs like backpacks that we just wear as a daily habit, like putting a shirt on. It’ll charge up overnight, then go in a sleeve that’s machine washable (otherwise ew), and have a half dozen or so PD USB-C ports that we just tap into for phones, smart watches, laptops, etc
People definitely care battery chargers around and I’ve seen some that are integrated into backpacks already so it’s kind of already started. I heard the chargeable backpacks are kinda meh though and you’re pretty much better off just sticking some batteries in your pack.
I’ve had a backpack for years that has usb plugs for a battery pack sewn into it. It’s been a thing for like a decade.
Longer I think
In order to keep costs down the Pi is based on some pretty ancient hardware. DDR2 uses so much power no matter what, it’s not like modern stuff that uses nothing idle.
Yeah, could put a beefier battery in this thing though.
These old Blackberry keyboards are amazing for stuff like that. They are cheap, avaliable and super well documented.
Here’s what I made with them: https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry
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What isn’t it? You could wardrive, emulate, run Linux or Windows even make a HackMac. Etc
