Bumble Berry Pi – A Cheap DIY Raspberry Pi Handheld Cyberdeck

IDK about pants pockets, but blazer- and sport-coat-wearing needs to make a comeback. Those hip pockets that can comfortably hold all the old pulp "pocket size" paperbacks from back in the day are so damn nice. Great for enormous modern smartphones, too.

WillAdams• 9 months ago

I miss the old Travelsmith shirts which had pockets sufficiently large to comfortably hold a Sony PRS-505/600 ebook reader. Since then, I did get a pair of shirts which have similarly large pockets which will accept my Kindle Paperwhite and/or Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, but really wish I'd bought more of them, and am kind of stumped for replacing them when they wear out.

sprobertson• 8 months ago

I printed the casing just to see - it actually does fit in my levi pockets (front and back), but looks and feels a bit ridiculous to actually walk around with

Etheryte• 8 months ago

As a man who wears jeans with a bit of stretch to them, I can easily (but not comfortably) fit a large can of beer in each of the four pockets. A small device is no problem compared to that.

embedding-shape• 8 months ago

As a man who lives in sweatpants, I could probably fit two cans in the pockets of my current pants, if I try really hard.

arkensaw• 8 months ago

Cargo pants!

voidUpdate2• 8 months ago

Generally, these sorts of devices struggle to fit in normal trouser pockets, especially women's pockets, but I'm happy that I managed to find women's jeans that actually have reasonable sized pockets, at least big enough to fit my pixel 7a in the front pocket. Still might be a bit small for this though. My hoodie pockets would probably hold it just fine though.

fer• 8 months ago

For a while I daily carried an Asus EeePC 901 in my jacket's pocket. Surprisingly comfy if I carried something on the other pocket on top. But yeah my jacket had exceptional pockets.

dec0dedab0de• 8 months ago

If you can't fit a Nintendo DS in your pocket you need new pants. Personally, I am annoyed I can't fit an NES in my pocket.

hiccuphippo• 8 months ago

I feel like "fits in my pants pockets" is one of those weird ways to measure size, like football fields. Does anyone actually puts these things in their pockets? I always carried my Nintendo DS in a backpack.

49e9919970c66f3• 9 months ago

thats really cool! i will consider making it myself

wg0• 9 months ago

Anyone has a RS36 Max?

anonymousiam2• 9 months ago

It looks similar to this project: https://github.com/ZitaoTech/HackberryPiCM5

I picked one up a few months ago and I like it.

MakerSam5• 9 months ago

Nice. Did you build your Hackberry or buy it?

The Hackberry looks awesome. I was going to build/buy one, but I wanted a slightly bigger screen and keyboard, and I also wanted to save some money by using an old 3b+ I had laying around. And I wanted to be able to build it quickly from off-the-shelf Amazon components. So all-in I think I spent ~$70 on this one, whereas the hackberry pi would have cost about double that, and then I would have had to buy the CM5 module.

Curious to hear of your experience with the hackberry - I still might consider getting one of those myself.

Hazematman• 8 months ago

Curious what bigger screen and keyboard you found. I was looking for similar stuff and struggled to find larger square displays. The closest I could find was spare blackberry passports screens, but you'd have to reverse engineer the screen connector.

anonymousiam2• 8 months ago

Yes, the Bumble Berry Pi is a lot cheaper than the Hackberry Pi, but the Hackberry Pi (with a CM5) performs much better.

I don't have a 3D printer, so I bought the kit from Elecrow. I had to buy my own CM5, a 2TB NVMEe SSD, and a suitably sized WiFi antenna (that would fit into the case without modification). I also picked up a $60 portable (1k) HDMI monitor because the 720x720 screen is difficult to use for apps like Firefox and Thunderbird. I use an Apple wireless keyboard and an Acer wireless mouse (both Bluetooth). The keyboard & monitor fit nicely into a plastic A4 document jacket. I was surprised that the Hackberry's USB-A ports provide enough juice to power the monitor. The Hackberry Pi has got a big battery. The one Hackberry Pi design choice that I don't like is the lack of an RJ45 Ethernet port. They could have left off the I2C port and squeezed a PHY in there somehow. (The CM5 has an Ethernet controller.) I've noticed that if I use a USB-A Ethernet dongle, it sometimes hangs under heavy traffic. I've tried dongles with different chipsets and they all seem to have the same issue. The WiFi speeds (as long as you have a good antenna) are great, and are usually faster than a USB Ethernet dongle anyway.

The thing is ideal for travel. It can fit into any hotel room safe, or go with you.

stOneskull2• 9 months ago

i'd like to try making this but i don't have a 3d printer nor know someone who does. i have a feeling that if i find a service that does it, that it would cost as much for the 3d printing as for the raspberry pi itself

squigz• 9 months ago

A quick look at a 3D printing service shows $20 for the upper part of the case. Not too bad. But also consider looking for a 3D printer at a local library or makerspace

stOneskull2• 8 months ago

i'm pretty rural, nothing local.. but have been looking at online services and comparing.. see how it goes :-)

linsomniac• 8 months ago

You probably know someone, or know someone who knows someone, if you don't have a library or makerspace that can print it for you. Shortly after I got my latest printer someone on our local "Free Stuff" exchange Facebook group, a message asked if someone could 3D print the parts for a circular knitting machine. I took up that call and spent 2 weeks printing 100-some parts, and I just asked them to cover the filament, so around $70 (4 roles of PETG). Think about asking on reddit/facebook/nextdoor.

Gisbitus• 8 months ago

I don't know if you're based in the US, but here in Europe I used Xometry and, while expensive for what you're getting, it was pretty reasonable.

I built a cyberdeck bigger than this and the case came out to be around 30 euros.

voidUpdate2• 8 months ago

I've not tried it myself, but I know that JLC does a 3d printing service in some funky materials that I definitely can't print at home, and it might be a bit pricey but from what I've seen online, the quality is pretty good. You could get the case printed in TC4 titanium if you really wanted

schwartzworld2• 8 months ago

Many libraries offer 3d printing for the cost of filament.

DroneBetter• 9 months ago

is Raspberry Pi OS entirely usable without a trackpad/mouse or does this need an external one to be connected?

MakerSam5• 9 months ago

The Bumble Berry has a touchscreen, so if you need to use the Raspberry PI OS GUI, you can simple use your finger as a mouse pointer. I've found it works pretty well for the rare occasions that I need to start the GUI.

However, I mostly use this unit in terminal, which means I boot to terminal and only occasionally start up the GUI with startx when I need it.

I use terminal because: I'm trying to brush up on my terminal skills and most of my use-cases are covered in terminal with applications. Some of my favorite terminal applications are:

tmux - for managing multiple terminal windows nano - for writing code (occasionally I use vim) tty-clock - nice clock screen saver lynx - text based web browser. works surprisingly well on some sites like wikipedia epy - ebook reader - great for reading classic free ebooks from Project Gutenberg doom - because doom cmatrix - matrix-style screensaver - looks really cool

My main use case is for learning new code languages - it's nice to have a handheld device on me to practice writing code when I have a few minutes on me but don't have a laptop

9999000009992• 9 months ago

Very very cool.

Once upon a time I wrote a small script to turn a raspberry pi into a midi device. I really want to be able to make my own custom midi controller, but it's not exactly fun.

schwartzworld2• 8 months ago

Do share. I have similar aspirations

9999000009992• 8 months ago

Sure.

Do you have any way to email or message you.

pkphilip• 8 months ago

What is the possibility of attaching a GSM module to this to make voice calls and send SMS? I mean, can we make this into a basic phone?

MakerSam5• 8 months ago

You might be able to do it with a cellular modem hat like this one: https://a.co/d/2zFdzec

You might need to design a new back panel for the enclosure.

Bumble Berry Pi – A Cheap DIY Raspberry Pi Handheld Cyberdeck

Related Stories