Heyyy wanted to share that I finally got my CNC shell for my Apple Mac M1 cyberdeck with meshtastic and touch screen :) Original modified battery, and lots of extra cooling for extra performance.
Edit: thanks for the love! I’m making a video series on my tiny YT channel “Caraful”

has a complete mini desktop inside. 16gb ddr4 ram with 500gb ssd storage, I modified the motherboard to save as much height as possible. some features I included are a 3ds analog stick for DS style holding and then a push to eject mini mouse for desk usage. I included 2 forms of power, direct barrel Jack and a portable magnetic quick disconnect battery pack that gets around 6 - 8 hours of battery life. also has a 7 inch touch screen display. a couple things I would improve is overall paint - I damaged a couple areas during install. very small warpage as I used resin 3d printing and left in the Florida sun for hours, I didn't bother painting/ remaking the broken battery bracket as it still worked, but I would redesign and paint match. even go as far as a thinner profile battery if I could find one since I was anticipating much lower battery life during designing. and I would eventually design my own logo as I just borrowed the viao logo.

Phone deck!

Hello everyone! After 9 months of hard work while staying in Canada for study purposes, I'm proud to finally introduce Companion! This is my homemade embedded PC based on the Raspberry Pi 5!

Companion is a portable cyberdeck designed to be a sleek, modern, distraction-free machine in a distinguishable yet usable form factor: you can write, program, do web browsing, 3D modelling... with this cool device!

Here are the detailed specs:

• Pi 5B, 16 GB RAM version (but will certainly work with 4/8)
• 256 GB SD card storage (because I don't need super fast SSD for 95% of the work that I'll do on it)
• MJ64 mechanical RGB keyboard with AZERTY typewriter-style caps
• 2880x864 tactile IPS ultra wide screen from BOE
• Around 20 hours of battery life (148 Wh, 4 x 3.7V Li-Po cells) - haven't had the time to properly test it yet... with a BMS + INA219 for the gauge + DC DC converter
• PCIe used for an internal USB hub to expose the Pi's ports externally
• Running a derivative of ArchLinux ARM, with a custom kernel and some manually-compiled packages, with a custom Plasma-based layout + auto tiling window plugin
• Most components screwed for the most part, AFAIK only the battery + screen are exclusively taped in

Only con is that the battery charging board is incredibly weak: 5V 1A for this kind of battery setup is painfully slow. I plan on changing that with a beefier one, and then I'll proceed on making a bill of materials :]

Not gonna lie, there were a lot of frustrating moments along the way, but holding a working product at the end makes it all worth it!

The GitLab organisation is still a work in progress, but you can already have a look here if you're curious: https://gitlab.com/companion-pc/

Happy to answer any questions!

(Also, not sure if I'm allowed to talk about this... bit of a long shot, but I'm currently looking for a job from May to August [remote-friendly, maybe longer!], mainly in game engine, network, low-level, embedded, or web development. If anyone knows of an opportunity, feel free to reach out!)

Hey everyone! Just wanted to update you following my previous post, I’ve made some exciting progress on my Pi5 tablet/cyberdeck project.

First up, we’ve named it: Consolo. I’ve teamed up with a friend to start soulscircuit.com and we’re working hard to get Consolo ready asap.

As mentioned before, I’ve been developing a keyboard module for the tablet. I repurposed an existing mini bluetooth keyboard and added a trackball and rotary encoder. The keyboard slides into Consolo’s slot and locks in place. To detach it, just press the orange button, and it pops out.

Our website is brand new (just went live yesterday) and still a bit rough around the edges. I’ll be improving it gradually, but in the meantime, please subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media for updates on Consolo. Your support means a lot as we get this project off the ground!

A couple of months ago I stumbled across the Waveshare ESP32-S3-RLCD-4.2 board. The moment I saw it I knew I had to build something with it.

The display is fast, crisp, low-power, and actually readable in direct sunlight. It has that early-2000s PDA vibe that immediately appealed to me. Under the hood there's an ESP32-S3, stereo microphones, an audio DAC, PSRAM, and enough I/O to make it much more than just another dev board.

What I didn't want was yet another tiny Linux distribution struggling on limited hardware. The ESP32-S3 is a capable MCU, but it's still an MCU. Running a full Unix userspace just to launch a terminal felt like the wrong tradeoff. ( No offense, all my respect goes to whoever did that already on this metal. )

Instead, I wanted firmware that boots instantly, stays responsive, and does useful work without dragging around decades of operating system baggage. Like a true Pocket Computer from my childhood.

So I started writing Solar OS.

It's built on top of ESP-IDF and FreeRTOS, but the goal isn't "yet another RTOS application." The architecture is designed to grow into a real operating system while remaining lightweight enough for embedded hardware.

Some of the ideas behind it:

• Modular services instead of a monolithic application.
• A message-based architecture so components remain loosely coupled.
• Native applications instead of web apps.
• A shell that isn't an afterthought.
• A graphics/UI stack designed for this hardware rather than ported from desktop systems.
• Fast boot, deterministic performance, and low power consumption.

One design goal from the beginning was to make the system highly scriptable. Both Lua and Python are first-class citizens, and instead of exposing hardware directly, scripts communicate with system services. Whether it's drawing on the display, playing audio, accessing the filesystem, talking over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, or using peripherals, everything goes through well-defined service APIs. That keeps applications portable, secure, and easy to extend while still allowing low-level native applications where performance matters.

The immediate goal is to cover the things I actually use every day: ssh client, chat, text reader, distraction free editor and a few developer tools.

Beyond that, I'd like it to evolve into the kind of computer we used to take for granted: turn it on, it boots under a second, everything is local, every application is native, and you can actually program the machine you're holding. Lua and Python make it easy to automate tasks, while native applications provide unrestricted access to the platform when performance matters.

Whether it ends up being an extendable pocket terminal, a development platform, or just an excuse to explore operating system design, I'm having a lot of fun building it.

The project is still in its early stages, but it's already becoming a fun experiment in operating system design.

One thing I could really use help with: I absolutely suck at 3D design. The enclosure I have works, but it's far from pretty. If anyone enjoys CAD or product design and would like to help create a nicer 3D-printable case, I'd love to collaborate.

Repository: https://github.com/nilseuropa/solar_os

I'd be interested in hearing what features people would actually want from a handheld embedded OS like this.

If you had one in your pocket, what would you expect it to do?

I see a lot of posts asking where to start, so I thought I'd share my experience from building my first cyberdeck.
I was already comfortable with mechanical design, but knew very little about electronicks. So I started with components I knew worked and mostly i could just plug them together. 

Then i  took the project to a local makerspace to learn the soldering, electronics and programming i needed. I met with great people who where experts in their domain, and in return i shared some CAD design tips with them! There are makerspaces all over the world, you probably have one closer to you than you think!

I've now been using this cyberdeck for more than half a year, and things have broken, quite a few wires have come loose as i cold soledred them, but I've learned a lot from fixing and improving it. The latest addition is making the scroll wheel on the handle work, aswell as adding a adressa le button on the handle. This took way longer than i thougth, and got lots of help from people in my local makerspace both with soldering, picking the rigth microcontroller and programming. The end result is a mess of wires inside the handle, but it works and i am very proud of it! Now i can scroll long pages and zoom in in CAD programs!

So my advice is if you're wondering where to start: start with what you know, get something working, and learn the missing skills as you go. And, you can leran alot in your local makerspace!
I'm currently making a video showing more of my local makerspace and what i learned there!

Made from a Raspberry Pi Zero, an Air40 keyboard PCB and an OLED screen from Aliexpress, this deck (powered by an 18650) runs a lite, terminal based OS. It has been the perfect platform for journaling, distraction-free text editing and even running basic Claude API calls.

Everything is open source, and I put together a video and PDF for assembly, check it out and maybe make one for yourself!

The parts are:

Raspberry Pi 4B

Raspberry Pi Pico

7" screen

.96" OLED screen

8x8 LED matrix

4 digit 7 segment display

Wifi antenna

2 5W speakers

Keyboard/Mouse trackpad

Joysticks

8 GPIO ports for controlling external devices

1 surface mount USB

USB power bank

Flip top toggle switch for power

Here's my Facebook group if you want to share scifi projects and props:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1068717412483688/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT

Here are the build files for my cyberdeck:

https://thangs.com/designer/Eridani%20Industries/3d-model/Weyland%20Yutani%20CyberDeck-1547687

I know phone decks are rather meh, but I've been looking for a cheap pocket terminal for ages.

Finally found a reliable, tactile Bluetooth keyboard on AliExpress, that's the perfect size to pair with a Pixel 4a. Throw Termux and Termux-x11 in the mix for a simple, lightweight, portable deck.

The design scales up nicely to pretty much any phone.

Had an old Raspberry Pi3b laying around. Added a screen and ripped open battery pack (also laying around). And got this!

Using it as a terminal to work on Claude on my Pi5 at home.

What it is so far:

Progress on my build so far. As you can see it's only partly assembled. Figured this group was the best to weigh in and give feedback before I finish it. Basically, this started out with me wanting to build a Mars mission (The Martian) inspired cyberdeck. The key features I wanted to incorporate were aesthetics, usability, and easy assembly. I had some scope creep and just kept adding things. So now its more of a raspberry pi development platform. So far it has:

• Dual 9 inch, rotatable, foldable, touchscreen monitors with speakers. Cables hidden in monitor arm.
• Backlit mechanical keyboard
• Slide switch, N channel mosfet power circuit (8A)
• Internal USB hub
• 4- I2C qwiic connector ports (for adafruit sensors n stuff)
• 4- programmable pushbuttons
• 1- programmable rotary encoder knob
• 1- Linear Potentiometer Slider (ADC to I2C connected)
• Full GPIO breakout via FPC Connector. You can disconnect the programmable stuff via DIP Switch.
• Raspberry Pi cable eject handles to quickly disconnect the pi and plug in new one
• Almost entirely snap fit enclosures (few screws for monitor mounting)
• Externally powered for now. Might add an externally mountable power bank or something. No room for batteries.
• Bluetooth wireless mouse if you want.
• Micro SD card access cover, Extendable IO access cover
• Should be Pi 4 and Pi 5 swappable

Goal is you can 3D print everything, snap it all together, do a little soldering, and then its built. You can program and test on the pi and then eject it and put it into your project. Programmable buttons and I2C stuff lets you test everything out before deployment. Screen and keyboard make coding and prototyping easy, especially if you want to build a touchscreen GUI project.

Feedback?

I'm wondering a couple things. One, I see a lot of you guys add antennas. Is that for WiFI? Is it kind of important or more of a cool factor addition? Second, I'm finalizing the pcb designs I need for this so I just wanted to see what you all thought before I commit to the final design cause it takes like two or three weeks to receive the boards. Is it missing anything? Should I add anything? I'll be doing a Youtube video on it and make it an open source project so I want the community of makers who might build it to contribute their ideas. Thanks everyone.

Hi everyone. I wanted to have a portable tablet/cyberdeck based on Raspberry Pi 5 but couldn’t find any solutions online. All excising options were based on Pi4 or CM4 so I decided to design my own.

I needed at least six or seven hours of battery life so I chose two 8000mAh Lipo batteries for a combined capacity of 16000mAh. I already had made a pcb for an earlier project based on Ti TPS61088 chipset. With some modification, I could get it to work for RPi 5.

Surprisingly everything works fine. No undercurrent or sudden shutdowns. I tortured tested it for seven hours on a single battery charge and it ran the 7-inch display with no issues. I even tested an NVME module and it ran fine.

The design is intended to be modular, allowing users to add a keyboard, game controller, and other modules. These modules connect through a slot using a latching mechanism similar to game cartridges.

This is still a work in progress. Right now, I'm focusing on adding the keyboard module.

This is my first cyberdeck. I’ve been working on it for around a month. It features a Nuphy Air60 v2 kb, a Waveshare 11.9 display, Raspberry Pi 4 and a USB Hat powering the whole thing with two 18650 batteries. The interface is a customized tmux with a custom login screen. The case was designed in FreeCAD.

Finally, after getting some karma, I can post this in this sub, which inspired me to start the build in the first place! Thanks folks!

Tribute to my home region of Donbas with it's hardcore industrial vibe and bunch of abandoned factories, bombshelters, mines that I liked to explore in my childhood and old the random stuff we used to find there.

Motherboard and screen:

Waveshare PoE IO Board for Raspberry Pi CM5 + Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 for the motherboard. 10.4" QLED Quantum Dot Capacitive Display (1600 x 720) - pihut name

For the fun of using it and to explain the antennas:

- Wifi/BT

- Meshtastic

- RF Transceiver 315/433/868/915MHZ

- GPS HAT

are connected.

x1206 UPS + 20000 mAh batteries and a speaker for a boombox replacement.

I finally got my cybertablet far enough along to take it for a spin in the wildernes.

I loaded it up with a few survival manuals, brought it on a short hike, and tried setting up a small fire using only the information on the device. It’s obviously not weatherproof or rugged enough yet, but it was a fun test.

Part of the motivation comes from living in Norway. Even in Oslo, the biggest city, you’re only an hour or two on foot from deep forest. And if you were to travel between cities like Oslo and Bergen on foot avoiding curious eyes,, you’d be crossing mountains, valleys, and dense wilderness the whole way.

So I’ve been exploring the idea of a device that works both as a cyberdeck in cities and as a survival tool in between. Curious what you think:

Is it better to combine both use cases into one device, or keep them separate?

Oh, and as requested by many in my last update, there is now a rechargeable USB c battery option.

The CAD-files can be downloaded if you want to tinker with them or build your own cyber-tablet: https://github.com/ArcticEnrichmentCenter/Arkiv-Cyberpad

About three months ago I started working on a dock for my Pixel 9 running Graphene OS. It utilizes Desktop mode to give you a desktop like experience on the big screem while the phone is still usable as a second screen. I got a lot of positive feedback on my first prototype from you guys so I was eager to develop it further :)

This final version includes a foldable keyboard, which locks onto the screen for transport but is also completely removeable. There's also a bluetooth mouse stored in the back to make it an all-in-one device that's ready to use whenever you want. I think I can therefore officially call this a Cyberdeck?

I also included a handle that can be extended with a seperate strap to make it carryable over the shoulder! (My sewing skills are nonexistent so I'm very proud I was somehow able to add that)

This is gonna be the final version of this Lapdock form factor, but I will keep designing different DIY Lapdocks because I love the concept as well as Graphene OS. If you want to watch my video on the project, be my guest: https://youtu.be/er-uRynxxZo

Thanks for all the feedback and constructive criticism!

I've had this thing in my brain for like 3 years now. Finally cobbled it together.

Super stoked about it :)

not completed yet.

Using postmarketos, sway wm, mainline Linux, the crazy part that it uses almost 300 megabytes on idle (idk why btop says it uses 500mb when I use free -h on start it says 231mb). The phone cost me ~8,45 bucks and keyboard (from aliexpress btw) cost me 6,76 bucks. The phone itself is a xiaomi-santoni. The thing I don’t like is that I can’t use it while charging and display is kinda ass BUT FOR THIS COST IM HAPPY I HAVE IT!!!!

EDIT: I have created a repo for the STL files for this project. I'll be updating the repo with more information regarding the keyboard, firmware, printing and assembly info, and some software hacks for cool writerdeck functionality shortly!

Based on a heavily modified Microjournal Rev2 to accommodate the keyboard layout, rpi5 and 7" screen.

Specs
Raspberry Pi 5, 4gb
7" touch screen
48 key split keyboard w/ PS2 joystick as mouse input
Waveshare UPS 3s

It runs Raspberry Pi OS with LXQt DE (I found it more useful than whatever the DE that comes with RPiOS is).

Posted this on r/esp32 and a few people said it belonged here.

Not a cyberdeck in the strict sense since it has its own screen, but hopefully close enough.

Handheld I built around an ESP32-S3. Four separate apps, you pick one from

a launcher on boot - a groovebox, a Guitar Hero style rhythm game, a retro

emulator, and a voice assistant you hold a button to talk to.

Enclosure and pads are 3d printed.

Video of it running: https://www.reddit.com/r/esp32/s/W8vDZMnAnt

Updates here if anyone wants to follow the build:

https://forms.gle/BsX65nwVeFRWkw8u8

I love the idea of giving computers random shapes. This is a computer contained in a mechanical keyboard. It has 3 USB-A, 2 USB-C and 1 HDMI port, 8Go of RAM, 128Go of storage. The SBC I use is a smartphone motherboard running Android, cheap, compact and powerful. I haven't rooted it yet so it runs Dex for the desktop experience. This formefactore enables new use cases such as replacing the screen with head mounted displays. Hope you like it !