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Trying to build the ultimate Raspberry Pi computer – Zero Terminal V3
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoNow this, this is a project we can all get behind. Adding radio with kill-switch and getting PostmarketOS working on this will essentially make this a smartphone replacement to reclaim mobile computing from the duopoly. Also, N-O-D-E publishes all the requisite files; Essentially making this a 'Build your own smartphone' project and those who don't want to get their hands dirty could order one from the website when available.
- saagarjha 6y ago> will essentially make this a smartphone replacement to reclaim mobile computing from the duopoly I think it’s a bit too thick to reclaim anything, to be honest, but its nerd cred is off the charts.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago> I think it’s a bit too thick to reclaim anything, Current chase for thinness by manufacturers, even if it means sacrificing structural integrity[1] is laughably absurd. May be I'm bit biased since I was frankensteining a similar concept with my limited capacity, but if the thickness of the device in this prototype is ~2.5" to 3" then the size of the final production device wouldn't be a deal breaker for many. [1]https://youtu.be/eweyhaE6mpI?t=518 https://youtu.be/eweyhaE6mpI?t=518
- Wandfarbe 6y agoI assume so; I would not replace my proper well working phone with a makeshift device like this at all. And there are plenty of options out there already; No need to wait for this setup.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago>And there are plenty of options out there already; No need to wait for this setup. Like? The only current mainstream Linux capable smartphone with physical keyboard I know of is Planet Computer devices[1]; even there, the first party support is for android and so the hardware is closed like any other android device out there. [1]https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/ https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/
- Wandfarbe 6y agoI'm not sure if i missed it but you did mention physical keyboard; Without this physical keyboard, you have phones like https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/#overview https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/#overview Also there are plenty of non google service based android phones and alternatives. You can also use Linux on most Android Phones as well. A Pi Zero or a Pi in general is very very far away from what a Android based Phone does and can do. Alone for Security. What is your thought why you would assume a lot of people could get beind this setup? I do like the project, its nice though but for me probably for different reasons then for you.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago'Without physical keyboard' there are about half-dozen alternative mainstream options now[1] for Google/Apple ecosystem, Thankfully. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24072868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24072868
- inawarminister 6y agoPinePhone has a keyboard attachment based on N900 keyboard (landscape slider) on the way supposedly. It also runs PostmarketOS, Mobian, and other mobile Linux distros natively so we'll see...
- tomcooks 6y agoI'd rather have a thick phone than a slim chance of not being tracked. I'll build mine with a metal casing and a GPS for outdoor shenanigans, as sturdy as an AK-47 and as thick as the SCIP
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoI agree. If isn't an operational security risk, can you share pictures of your setup?
- silly-silly 6y agoI too wish to subscribe to this newsletter.
- rimliu 6y agoAre you going to build your own cell towers too?
- RandomBacon 6y agoThe top-level comment that was being replied to already specified "radio with kill-switch"
- grugagag 6y agoNot only that but im thinking that this could be upgraded, modded, fixed, full control, privacy and last but not least: no planned obsolesce
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoThat deserves an applaud, but what about Librem? Aren't they way ahead on that path? Why are you not just using that? Drivers too fresh and battery-hungry for you? But it is going to be 10 times worse with any DIY project...
- progval 6y agoI find my phone way too thin, I can barely use it as-is. Thankfully I have a thick case which quadruples its depth (to about 1cm), which is very usable and still fits in any reasonable pocket. From the video, it looks like the Zero Terminal V3 is about the same size as my phone, so it would be great, at least for myself.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago>I find my phone way too thin, I can barely use it as-is. I have heard the same reason from many of my contacts, they even use a finger grip on the back of their cases. Phones have crossed reasonable thinness few years back, thanks to a certain manufacturer who started marketing 'Thinness' but have since stopped once their phone started bending in the pants.
- asutekku 6y agoThis will be a niche product and for that I’m sceptical it’s sustainable on the long run. There’s no way this would even make a dent to Apple’s or Google’s marketshare. Sure, it’s a nice device for tech-people, but general consumers will most likely not use this.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago>There’s no way this would even make a dent to Apple’s or Google’s marketshare. That's the bane of monopolies or duopolies; no good for anyone except for the 'Investors'.
- aspenmayer 6y agoWhat kind of brave new world are we living in, where a one-person noncommercial project need be competitive with gigacorp industrial output to be considered valid, let alone judged on its own merits?
- emptyparadise 6y agoNot everything needs to be a product.
- limomium 6y agoAbsolutely nothing will make it a smartphone replacement unless it has good battery life. Smartphones are batteries with computers attached.
- neilv 6y agoThis is impressive work, and I would like to have this, or something like this. A question is whether the amount of clever effort that went into working around constraints of the Pi Zero, would be enough to incorporate the Pi Zero aspects of this assembly into a single board? Also, maybe not even an exact Pi, but using a RISC-V core and fully open firmware, even if less powerful at this time?
- projektfu 6y agoIs there a RISC-V SOC with HDMI?
- kokey 6y agoI actually do like the fact that it uses an existing Pi Zero board, even if much creativity is needed to add so much functionality to it in a small space. It reminds me of gopro cameras being taken apart and custom modules added to make it lightweight to use on small drones. I think this is a developing trend, leading to somewhat of an open source supply chain of creative applications for hardware devices. I think we benefit of the economies of scale of the Rpi boards already, just like we do from individual chips, so these custom boards ties that together nicely.
- mschuster91 6y agoNow imagine this, just with the Compute Module in a version with proper PCI-E... sigh.
- cricalix 6y agoWell, supposedly[0] the next iteration of the CM will be based on the Pi 4 guts, and expose the PCIe capabilities. The maker of the hardware being discussed also mentions that they might try the compute module (it probably makes a lot of sense from the custom PCB side of life?). 0: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-nvme-support-coming https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-nvme-support-...
- mschuster91 6y agoOh finally. That's good news especially for people who'd like to tinker with advanced stuff requiring PCI-E chipsets who don't really have the nerve to risk wrecking a hundreds of dollars worth of x86 mainboard/CPU...
- p0llard 6y ago> tinker with advanced stuff requiring PCI-E chipsets What sort of things are you talking about here, out of interest? The only way you're going to wreck hardware is if you're attaching something completely incompatible at the physical level (wrong levels, shorts, etc.); if you're "tinkering" you almost certainly don't have the resources to bring up your own PCIe PHY (there's pretty much no way to do this without custom silicon) so presumably you have some preexisting hardware in mind? If you just want to play around at the TLP level (for example by using the hard PCIe core in a cheap Xilinx Series-7 chip) then this is all pretty safe: (temporary) catastrophic system instability is one thing (I learned this the hard way when I accidentally had my FPGA spamming MSIs every free cycle), but real hardware damage is pretty tricky.
- dfox 6y agoGamers and crypto miners do various nasty things to PCIe cards in order to use cheapest cable possible to extend it and actual hardware damage resulting from that seems pretty minimal.
- antupis 6y agoI would love pocket computer that I could use to programming when I don't have access to laptop.
- asddubs 6y agoi miss phones with slide out keyboards
- CapricornNoble 6y agoI still have my Android G1/ HTC Dream. If I could get a phone with roughly the same form factor, just a modern CPU/GPU/RAM/camera and bigger battery, I'd be in heaven. Needs to run PostmarketOS or PineOS too.
- jcun4128 6y ago6:55 haha one pixel is a letter, the form factor is really cool I thought it would just be a Pi inside but there is also a bigger board combining functionalities. I do have a inclination for "disposable" computing (old $50 Chromebooks using i3-wm) though and mostly I notice it's the ram so yea i3-wm is a must. This is cool it's full/has everything. Needs more compute I think. I've started seeing small form factor builds like this 6GB ram 4K capable cube thing for gaming using Atom processor. Oh Larkbox it's called
- shaan7 6y agoThat keyboard reminds me of the Nokia N900 <3
- bildung 6y agoThe form factor reminds me of the OQO and similar UMPCs from that era. Edit: It even has the same sliding keyboard as the OQOs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO
- rcarmo 6y agoThis seems like a perfect use case for the 3A+ (which is quad-core and only slightly larger than the Zero).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- verytrivial 6y ago<grumble>HN has given N O D E love for the design aesthetic of the presentation and video format recently, but it feels like I'm being fed the details via Morse code. It's infuriating! There is no summary, no overview, no block diagram, just a wall of transcribed prose and gamble on a non-indexed, un-subtitled 8 minute video. I imagine many people (myself included!) will just go "Okay, there a black brick and screen thing with an RPi zero (or is it a different model?) in it ... or something" and move on. Perhaps this is intentional in the same way the OpenBSD homepage is purposefully ugly, to scare off people and create a small effort-moat.</grumble>
- imtringued 6y agoWell, patience is key. Just read the transcript and you'll notice that the project is not finished.
- sgt 6y agoThe OpenBSD web page is 126kB (less after gzip). Once the image resources are cached, it's only a measly 4kB for the HTML and 4kB for the CSS. I'd say that more than makes up for the page being ugly.
- verytrivial 6y agoLooking like it was made by software engineers who don't care about--and perhaps even distain--emphasis on visual design is part of the brand! I mean if you gave a front-end whippersnapper a 126kB budget clearly something with some design harmony could be made that wouldn't, as I say, scare people off. It sets the tone and in a rather quaint way says "This might not be what you are looking for." I like it.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoVery nice, I can imagine all sort of applications for this. How much is the power usage?
- Kolians 6y agoI'd buy this.
- jstanley 6y agoThis is a superb project, really nice work! I kept thinking "oh nice, you'd just want to add a---" and you've already done it! Incredible stuff. I can't wait to see how this progresses. The keyboard design is really neat. It reminds me a lot of the old Nokia N900, still the best phone I've ever owned. Do you have any idea how much battery life you get?
- marasal 6y agoI still miss my old Nokia E7 phone with qwerty keyboard.
- uberneo 6y agoWith that sliding keyboard it reminds me of Nokia N900. I still have one of those .. might dust it off so !!
- kozak 6y agoI am puzzled why there are no widely available laptop-like cases for the Raspberry Pi, especially considering that now there is a 8 GB version of it. "pi‑top [3]" came close, but it was somewhat childish and apparently it's not sold anymore.
- dunnevens 6y agoPart of the problem is how thick the Pi's are. They're small computers on their own. But in a laptop case, they're chunky. Much thicker than your average off-the-shelf laptop. Plus, there's still rough edges when trying to use them as desktops. The Pi Zero would work in terms of size, but is very underpowered for desktops. The Pi Compute would probably be the perfect fit, but that hasn't been updated in a rather long time. Also underpowered. So I can see why there's not much of a market. The hobbyists are largely doing something other than standard desktop use, and the people who need laptops (even cheap ones) are better served with something off-the-shelf. The best bet for the future are the handful of laptop-style docks coming out. Just plug your phone or pi into one of the external ports and go.
- enchiridion 6y agoMaybe even a card like case that mounts to a case? I would be ok with a "pi bump" on the case.
- kozak 6y agoI would be fine if it was bulkier than modern ultrabooks and more like the old-school Toshiba Libretto. The added volume can be used for batteries, overall sturdiness, as well as other creative uses. P.S. I decided to try and goodle that topic again, and I found one that is coming soon: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=24092182 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=24092182
- grugagag 6y agoI wonder what the price range for this would be. I’d readily pay up to 300 but would think twice if it goes above that. im thinking that this device could be upgraded, modded, fixed, have full control over the software, have privacy and last but not least: no planned obsolesce
- jascii 6y agoI'm a bit saddened by the lack of built in keyboard in this iteration. I see the modular bit, but it kinda takes away from the "terminal in your pocket" idea.
- jamesgeck0 6y agoThe sliding keyboard in the video is only like half a centimeter thick; plenty of room in your pocket with for the unit and attached module.
- atum47 6y agolove your videos
- jamesfmilne 6y agoIf he's making PCBs, why not base it on a compute module? edit: He does indeed say he's contemplating this.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoI wonder if that keyboard module could be reworked to attach to a pinephone; obviously you'd have to replace the actual connection to switch from usb to i2c, but otherwise it looks nearly drop-in.
- loraa 6y agoThis is something that everyone who has ever built a Pi has thought about but haven't stoned enough and motivated enough at the same time in order to write a web page about it.