Cyberboy

I'm not sure when it started exactly, probably the first time I watched either Star Wars or Star Trek, but it feels like I've always wanted to have a handheld device for... really anything I could think--mainly controlling things around the house and hacking (think the capabilities of Smart House combined with the pure hacking skills of the girl from Jurassic Park). I started seeing this device pop up but the price combined with the long wait times made it not a great option. So I thought, why not make one myself. I had the raspberry pi laying around, had the batteries and other random odds and ends laying around, and the rest of the materials were relatively cheap at the time.

There are A LOT of homemade cyberdecks out there. I had to really narrow down the options to minimize the extra materials to purchase (mainly the keyboard which is... not great...). But I landed on the Cyberboy, and I'm actually pretty happy with the overall design. It's a really well thought out design and everything came together pretty seamlessly. Link below to the original design I printed (a few times since it's not a lot of materials overall).

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6921480

I'm really glad I didn't go through with buying the Uconsole originally now that I've tested the Cyberboy. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the idea, but the actual usage is really just not great. It's clunky to hold, the keyboard is really just not good, the screen is too small for a desktop environment and would really only work with a terminal-only Linux install. Other than those hugely fundamental and UX breaking flaws, the thing is awesome. It's so cool looking and was such a fun thing to build and get together and working!

I ended up repurposing basically everything except for the 3d printed parts and that awful keyboard. The RPI is now part of a small test K3s cluster and being put to good use. Overall, it was a really fun project to work on and I MIGHT revisit it again and try a different cyberdeck that improves on the Cyberboy.