A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15 | Hacker News Reader

A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

bbenchoff.github.io

813 pointskotaKat391 comments

> It costs $10,000 USD to build one of these

> The ten thousandth one costs $15

As a software engineer, I'm used to being able to build essentially whatever I want, with the only cost being my time. I'm often unpleasantly reminded that software is an outlier in that regard and as soon as physical items are concerned, especially hardware, it turns out that manufacturing even a simple thing is prohibitively expensive if it's done at a small scale.

In the software world something that works roughly similarly (i.e. where a prototype is differentiated from production) is devops. If you are deploying a toy-project once, maybe you are not setting up a CI/CD pipeline, Terraform templates, Github team permissions, Github/Jira integration, etc etc. - you do all of these things only for "real" products.

But yeah, going from prototype to production with hardware is much, much harder, I agree with you.

And the macro architecture of the project. As a one man project, the only thing it makes sense to build is a monolith.

Yeah as a solo freelance dev I couldn't see how stuff like microservices would remotely be helpful to me in any way. But a few years later I worked in a large-ish team where at some point we hit a wall due to the project being a monolith[1], then I realised what that stuff was about.

[1] the project changed scope and we had to do a large refactoring of the codebase as a result, if it had been based on microservices the refactoring would have been an order of magnitude simpler. Luckily the monolith was relatively well architected with separated service providers so it wasn't super bad.

I've seen people build one-of-a-kind custom electronics for themselves. There are PCB manufacturers that specialize on small orders with no setup costs (I think you can get as little as 3 copies?) and you can 3D print or laser cut the case if you need one.

Though the thing that does stick out to me as a software engineer is that you need parts and thus can't iterate on your ideas nearly as quickly. You can't just pull in a library or something, you have to order a part and wait for it to physically get to you. And the cost of any mistake is in actual real money because wiring something incorrectly can destroy things.

> And the cost of any mistake is in actual real money

That's the same in software engineering. You are losing your own time. If you are just breaking your prototypes and not the machines to build them, your time lost is probably multiple times more valuable than the material.

I guess, once you have billed a certain number of hours to clients, the relation between time and money just ingrains itself so deep inside your mind, that you might as well start telling the time in USD.

This is true, but it gets worse with hardware - it's not like your code fries itself because you forgot a character.

That's when you're working for money. If it's your own project, your mistakes cost you nothing but you learn something from every one of them.

https://oshpark.com/ is my favorite for low volume runs. You get 3 copies for $5/in^2

You could probably build one at home for a few hundred if you really wanted and did not care at all about time.

You would just need to 3D print a case and somehow cast your own silicone keypad. DIY electronics is actually not too bad cost wise.

You could probably design a very similar one of tbese wirh a standard enclosure ($5) tactile switches, and a custom PCB for the top. Custom PCBs are ridiculously cheap now and even pick and place has gotten affordable for small runs.

You can even run 4-layer impedance controlled boards that support BGAs for ~$60 and get 10 of them. Problem is I now have a bunch of unpopulated PCBs I don't really intend to use. I made a few PCIe x1 to SMA adapters for an FPGA devkit - even building a single one and considering the rest of the PCBs as write-offs was less than a quarter the price of premade ones.

I've been doing some test runs with HP multijet fusion prints, and I think that would be a great technology to use for case like this. You likely would need a couple-few tries to get it right, but it cleans up very nicely. I really don't like the look of FDM printed parts, so that aspect of it really appeals to me.

I'm sure you could buy a silicone keypad on Alibaba for a few dollars.

Keypad could probably be done with a flexible filament too.

So true. I recently helped a friend build a little bit of a backyard carpentry project and I was struck by the fact that I got the same creative satisfaction from building little pieces of software. With one big difference: that 2-day carpentry project cost around $1000 in materials. People wanting to create these kinds of things have to pay a big price. Whereas with code (and lots of free-tier cloud services etc) I can bang out endless ideas and useful projects for free.

The other big difference is that you generally can’t make mistakes in woodworking. Made a mistake in your code? No problem, you fix the bug. But not in woodworking. Cut a piece too short? You’re hooped. Drilled a hole in the wrong place? You’re hooped. Misalignment during glue-up? Hooped.

Woodworking scratches many of the same itches as programming for me, with one key difference: it’s unforgiving of mistakes, so requires a lot more care.

As a former mechanical engineer, the forgiveness is an amazing feature of software development. Not only can you easily correct mistakes, but you can deliberately run head first into them over and over, essentially brute forcing a working solution, without pausing to be precise. Especially with interpreted languages.

I'm not sure if this command will work? Well I may as well just try it anyway. Something broke? I'll throw in a breakpoint and try out a bunch of dummy variables and alternative methods until the errors stop.

And while it's a common complaint that compile times force some extra care, with hardware that extra care needs to happen outside the medium itself, mucking around with CAD software and such, before sending designs off to workshops. It'd be like if the solution to avoiding compile errors was very carefully handwriting code on paper

Just wait until it’s machining! Wood working at least most of the time tolerances are +- 1/8”. Throwing away a thousand dollar part because you were .003” off is lame.

At least if you have a grinder, welding can sometimes be more forgiving.

For me, the intolerance for mistakes is a major part of what makes it interesting. I love writing code too, but it's a different kind of thrill.

This is something I can totally reflect on. I am used to polishing things to production and showing my products to the world.

But working with wood a crippling anxiety hangs over me.

I have never heard "Hooped!" before, but this is cultural appropriation I can get behind.

Most of that "$10,000" is because of paying someone else for custom parts. If you use existing parts or make the custom parts yourself (if you have the ability/tools), it's less than $100.

So the software equivalent would be if you oursourced a large chunk of your project to someone else, and in that case, I think $10,000 might not be too far off.

Injection moulding is not cheap, getting the high quality steel mould produced costs $1000s, a largish portion of this is just the cost of a giant block of steel (there are two moulds here)

Interesting take, I guess trees can be pretty cheap if you grow them yourself.

I'm fairly decent with clay, always wondered if I could make something like a raspberry pi case with sculpey. But not curious enough to ruin my toaster...

Really depends. I started a small (consumer electronics) hardware startup. Bootstrapped and producing small quantities. There are ways to make it work.

It's actually not too bad to order custom pcbs now ($10 or less), but you do get raked over the coals if you need quality components in small quantities. Individual bulk caps can be several dollars.

Maybe it's including time invested into development?

The F1C100s is $5 for one piece on AliExpress, all the parts seem to be solderable by hand/manual reflow in an hour (the passives can be populated by JLC for like $30 for a batch of 5 boards, saving your time), the board would be $2/piece for a batch of 5 at JLCPCB (seems to be 2-layer), the enclosure can also be 3D-printed on a professional printer at JLC for tens of $, the only thing I don't have experience with is the conductive-rubber keyboard.

I've been down this road myself a time or three. It's $200 for the parts BOM, PCB, $10K for my time.

Then if you want to actually make a business out of it, another $500K for Lawyers, overhead, advertising, manufacturing contracts, headaches and so on.

But, the computer is very cute, and nice work. I was halfway expecting YARPIP (Yet another Raspberry PI project)

Very cool it was all done from scratch. Done that myself for a tablet prototype and it is a shit ton of work.

> it turns out that manufacturing even a simple thing is prohibitively expensive if it's done at a small scale

You can overcome some of the scaling costs with 3D printers. It's pretty cheap to make fairly robust plastic parts with a 3D printer if you can do basic CAD.

Amen. They used to say the first Space Shuttle launch of the year cost $3.5B, since that was the annual carrying cost of the non-unit costs. Got a lot cheaper after that, though never that "cheap".

Yes that is true, but only thanks to huge reliance on OPEN SOURCE. :) Without it, no tools, no infrastructure, no nothing.

This is nice. This is a simple, straightforward design, and a reasonably convenient form factor.

Two biggest limitations are RAM and wireless interfaces, or rather lack thereof. This thing has less RAM than my router (admittedly a $70 box), and has neither WiFi nor BT. It does not seem to have many GPIO pins, too.

With the amount of RAM installed, it's mostly a handheld terminal, and maybe a handheld console with emulators for old games.

While this is admirable as a proof of concept, I suspect that moving the price point up to, say, $30 could give a much more useful and hacker-friendly device.

I greatly appreciate the split keyboard and the replaceable NiMH batteries, though.

Well said. It's a great project and impressive execution at $15!

> While this is admirable as a proof of concept, I suspect that moving the price point up to, say, $30 could give a much more useful and hacker-friendly device.

I agree. I think this project proves that ultra low cost is viable. Now relaxing the constraints a bit to add RAM and WiFi could iterate it right into an optimal spot.

I wouldn't want to go much farther than RAM and WiFi, though. It's too easy to let these projects turn into a slippery slope.

I think we've already got a pretty powerful computer at around the 40$ price point (the raspberrypi), and I feel like it'd be impossible to beat it given the scale raspberry pi is at.

RasPi isn't a handheld though. And AFAIK there's no off the shelf case designs as nice as this.

Raspberry pi is just the motherboard. Add in a screen, power supply, keyboard and case, and that's going to inflate the total cost.

The RAM is embedded in the CPU - the slightly-more-expensive F1C200s doubles it to 64MB, but going beyond that would require a fairly significant redesign.

I don't disagree with you on the wireless, it would be nice to have built-in. But, all the same, there is a USB port, so it's at least possible.

I don't need wireless on something like this. Sure it will help in some cases, but if you need wifi connectivity, then you can usually use a full laptop while lounging on a couch. And you do not really need this. I am sure most people even considering something like this have a wifi enabled laptop already.

This would be great for plugging in in random places and making sure things work and initializing/configuring/troubleshooting various devices that for some reason cannot be reached over the wifi.

As far as complaints, I would go the other way -- why does it not have an Ethernet port. Yes you can use an Ethernet to usb adapter, but it would be so much more convenient if it had a port.

Enough for Tmux, busybox, SSH/Mosh, Lynx, Gopher, NNTP, IRC over bitlbee, music and video playing over Bluetooth speakers, PDF readers (fbipdf, fbpdf2), epub readers (unzip+lynx script), on the go coding...

Would you really want to code on this tiny screen though? I guess some people would, but you'd probably be a lot more comfortable even on a 12" or 10" laptop/netbook.

320x240 with a 5x8 font is 64x30 characters. You could make it work but it wouldn't be comfortable.

Oh ofc this is not "practical", but projects like these are always fun to see, how much something can be scaled down, that it can be in some cases be viable (think washing machines) to be a full linux-powered computer.

A forth env fits in 64x16. Nethack has a patch somewhere for low resolutions, from the zipit z2, based on the 3.4.3 release. If it works on Nethack, Slashem should be easily patchable, too.

Coding... what? Coding on other retro technologies? I guess if you enjoy working on system software sure, but if I can't even allocate enough memory to hold a large-ish JSON payload in memory, then I'm not going to be able to do much with the system. Only protocols like SMTP or NNTP are built around the ability to parse with minimal overhead (and even they can have large line lengths.)

Eh, wait a moment. I did several fun stuff with just CLI and C/tcl under the zipitz z2. Even with TLS. You understimate what we did in the 90's too with just 32 or 64MB of RAM.

Jabber uses XML and I did it fine under a system daemon like Bitlbee AND an IRC client on top of that. 48MB overall on the Zipit z2, 32MB + compressed ZRAM. The total usage was about ~16MB with a tiny MUSL build, tmux, ash, bitlbee and sic.

SMTP, NNTP, Gopher... are protocols for 16 and 8 bit architectured computers. Go figure.

A Classic Mac with System 6 could do IMAP just fine, jcs wrote a client for it.

I would imagine at $30 it would have to compete with other devices already built

Which devices?

Unlike an RPi, this thing has a screen, a keyboard, a sleek case, a battery compartment. What are other devices that have these all, and cost, say, under $40?

These little game things are $40. I have one. They use an old style removable cell phone battery and have a screen that isn't great (320x240 though similar to the one described in the article). It runs linux but Lamentably I don't think its easy to install your own version.

https://powkiddy.com/products/powkiddy-v90-3-inch-ips-screen...

Something like this one https://m.aliexpress.ru/item/1005003667540327.html?spm=a2g2w... I guess.

$15 is BOM cost, so ~$30 after assembly and ~$60 including margin for manufacturers and resellers. I don't know of anything that has both screen and keyboard at that price, but the $45 M5Stack has a screen and the $70 Raspberry Pi 400 has a keyboard.

An old android phone with a bluetooth or USB keyboard?

The display on this thing is the biggest limitation. 320x240? Is he fucking joking?

As long as wifi over USB is supported, why overcomplicate the core hardware? Sell a dongle as an add on option and make a little profit from it.

Completely an aside:

USB dongles piss me off; specifically the Logitech Mouse USB dongles:

Why the heck hasnt a single manufacturer included the USB Dongle radio IN the mobo?

So with slim laptops you have few USB ports.

I currently am typing this on an HP Omen flagship gaming laptop... It has ONE USB-C port, which is under-powered (I have a USB-C Hub, that requires an external USB-C Power source... so I have to plug the uSB-C Hub into my machine's C port, then plug the power USB-C <--> USB-B port consuming TWO of my USB ports on my machine...

I plug in multiple USB-based monitors as well - and I can carry it all in my backpack...

But we need MORE USB ports than fewer... and Mice should not consume a port.

BT mice have never been subjectively responsive enough for me. For example, I can test-map-out my BT environment in my home by connecting to the BT speaker and moving around and it skips....

/rant

> Why the heck hasnt a single manufacturer included the USB Dongle radio IN the mobo?

USB radio dongles are not standardized, that's what Bluetooth is for. (There used to be a Wireless USB standard but it was never widely adopted, and it has fallen out of use altogether.)

There are USB-C power bricks that also work as hubs, so you're not wasting your only USB-C port.

> BT mice have never been subjectively responsive enough for me.

Anecdotally, I've experienced very few issues with the Logitech MX Master (both the original and v3) on my Mac via BT - every once in awhile (often enough to be aware of it, but infrequently enough that it's not something I'd consider a problem) the original would cut out for a few seconds, but other than that it tracked perfectly, and I haven't even had the periodic cutting-out issue with the Master 3 (yet; I've only had it for a little over a month now).

Of course, this is dependent on the BT implementation of both the mouse and PC being used, which is something to take into consideration (I've had way fewer BT connection issues in general with MacBooks than with any Windows laptops).

My Logitech BT mouse works pretty well. I only notice one thing that's "special" about it and that is that it takes about 2 seconds to connect. As a result, when I first unlock my machine I'm spinning the mouse in a few circles until the cursor comes alive. Once it's alive, all is good. It's weird all these little things we learn to live with.

> BT mice have never been subjectively responsive enough for me.

I wanted to like Bluetooth mice, but they just didn't work out for me. Some of the wireless mice these days are dual mode though; can run with proprietary wireless or switch to BT to avoid the proprietary dongle (some of the proprierary dongles also can act as a standard BT dongle, if your computer doesn't already have one). I know there was a line of mice that did wifi instead of BT too, because that makes sense.

Because the point of something like this would be to be completely self contained. A shell in your pocket.

But but… you have a phone in there too… Which even on iOS has decent ssh clients.

idk but relying on USB in something with only 32MB RAM sounds potentially cumbersome. Besides a device like this is the intended use case for original ESP8266 so that's probably the way to go.

It only has one usb port. If you want to use the port for something other than wifi, then you would have to add a usb hub that would cost more and be dangling off.

I have the intuition that integral wifi is table stakes for a general computing device.

> neither WiFi nor BT I understand having WiFi, it'd be great for a small device like this. But why would we need Bluetooth? It only has 32MB of RAM so I doubt you could get any music running on it.

> It only has 32MB of RAM so I doubt you could get any music running on it.

Get off my lawn. With 8MB of RAM you could run Win95 AND a MP3 player.

A standard mp3 runs about 1MB per minute. You should really only have to buffer a couple seconds if you're streaming. If you try to keep a 4 second buffer your going to be somewhere between 40 and 70kb (this thing also has an SD card so you could keep a much shorter buffer if it was local.)

It really doesn't take much else, you'd need a tcp stack where most of the memory usage is buffers. Maybe 15-30 kb, and you'd need to load some player into mem as well.

There are tiny embedded devices all over that have music running on them. I've seen lightbulbs and light switches that can stream music.

Idk why everyone thinks it takes 500mb to play an MP3. Maybe because the vast majority of compute power these days seems to go to all the shit the app puls in to sell ads and native programs are all just electron apps but it really doesn't have to be like that for most functions of a computer.

I played MP3 files in realtime on my old Pentium 75 with 16MB of RAM with plenty of CPU and memory to spare. This thing is way more powerful than you need for simple music playback. Getting audio out however may be a challenge, maybe USB speakers?

MP3 already made such a PC sweat though. I doubt it could play 256 kbit AAC, and forget about HE-AAC or FLAC.

What? I played music perfecly on 16MB and an ARMv5 musl build of Linux+Busybox and mocp.

ZRAM did magic expanding the RAM to 24MB.

And under text mode you can do lots of things. With a framebuffer, say hello to 420p videos, PDF's and some web pages with images thanks to links -g.

You must use tmux+ash as your "interface", but it works.

I'm old so I'll just say that my Amiga 500 had 512KB of RAM, and it played really cool music!

You had 512KB? I had 64KB. If the machine booted to BASIC, it had exactly 28815 bytes free.

I could play music. Not waveforms, but MIDI-level.

Bluetooth:

- Direct file transfer between devices, with simplicity not comparable to wifi.

- Easy connection to the internet using a mobile phone (likely even the cheapest feature phone).

- Connecting a mouse (and maybe an external keyboard).

- Connecting a 2FA security token (may be important in the SSH terminal capacity).

IIRC many of the cheap mass-produced WiFi chips tend to just do BT as well in the same chip.

iPod had 32MB RAM and mostly for cache...

Bluetooth should be treated as a threat at this point.

Its used in so many tracking methodologies for BT Unique IDs tied to real humans...

Surely an ESP32 should be able to run Linux. Then you would get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

After all Linux used to run on 486, BSD ran on 386.

> Surely an ESP32 should be able to run Linux. Then you would get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Yes, but it wasn't easy, and only recently achieved. [0][1][2][3] Unfortunately, for both those examples, the WiFi module itself had to be disabled so that Linux had enough memory to function.

Though, of course, they should be able to do something like my favourite tiny Linux board, which wired in extra RAM. The 8bit Atmega [4], that only takes 4 hours to boot Ubuntu.

[0] https://twitter.com/xiaohui10556190/status/14163071689916047...

[1] https://whycan.com/p_66202.html

[2] https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/07/18/linux-5-0-esp32-proc...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/esp32/comments/dtlj7n/booting_linux...

[4] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/04/02/191203/gnulinux-ru...

Interesting, so linux was ported to RISC-V architecture, and there's a RISC-V emulator that runs on ESP32. I guess this means all the virtual memory is emulated. I think the more interesting step is if the successors to ESP32 have virtual memory. In the meantime, I found playing with freertos on esp32 lots of fun.

ESP32 is a microcontroller with tiny amounts of RAM and flash storage (smaller than any 386 machine). It's not going to run anything close to a "real" OS. You'd want to do the opposite: use a machine like OP's for near bare-metal programming, where the only things it's running are a minimal kernel and a custom init binary with your actual, single-purpose app. That way you make the best use of a limited amount of RAM.

You can get similar type of modular RISC-V + Linux systems on AliExpress if you want to do something closer to what OP is doing. Lichee is one of them who seem to have a crazy number of modules (I've not tested any of them - they could well be total junk), including also ARM boards and FPGA boards.

I don't know about Linux, but how about a (really early) BSD? https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/01/27/mini-replica-of-dec-...

Granted, that's going through SimH; it would be interesting to see if retrobsd or litebsd could be ported to run on ESP32 natively.

Kind of: https://hackaday.com/2021/07/21/its-linux-but-on-an-esp32/

Main issue with Linux on an MC is lack of MMU, though YMMV

There have been Linux distributions that ran on machines without MMU. For instance μClinux, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9CClinux

What about this one?

https://www.96boards.org/product/orangepi-i96/

Price isn't much higher than most ESP32 modules, and it can run plain Linux.

ESP32 is a custom CPU architecture... But they recently released an ESP32 varient with a RISC-V core. Still don't think it has an MMU though, which linux requires.

In China we buy second-hand Redmi 2 for 60RMB each (roughly $9.5). Can be bought in quantities. Fully functional with 2GB RAM+16GB eMMC, and battery, touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth, camera, and even 4G support. It's not built from scratch like this one, but if you are just looking for something cheap, then this price is insane.

How easy is it to patch its kernel?

It would seem a mainline linux kernel can run everything apart from the camera on (Redmi 2) SnapDragon 410: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/MSM8916_Mainlining

That's good news! I was thinking more about the question of locked bootloaders. Having to patch an outdated kernel is a lot less serious than not being able to run any kernel you've patched. https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/redmi-2-prime-bootloader-... suggests that maybe the Redmi 2 comes with an unlocked bootloader?

Amazing that we went from this potato[1] for $12 in 2013 to that Redmi 2 in 9 years. Now, you said that you buy the Redmi second-hand, but still - the leap is amazing.

[1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107

If you threw a a Qwerty keyboard and command line on that thing, it would be on the front page of HN right now

Where can one outside from Chime buy these phones (in bulk) ?

Something like this would be awesome when paired with a physical keyboard.

We had something like this in 2001. It was called the Agenda vr3 and it ran a full X session with the FLTK in 16meg of RAM. However, the history of PDA's that run linux is mostly lost since LinuxDevices.com doesn't really exist anymore. I owned several of these including Agenda VR3, Vtech Helio, Zaurus, etc. It was quite a nice system even without wireless unless you count IrDA. It used FTP over RS-232 for installing software using a primitive packaging system. The little linux distros for these devices didn't really take off until the Zaurus SL-5500 took off by going on sale for $220 on the home shopping network in 2003, and someone developed the packing system called ipk which was a little more intelligent and reminiscent of Slackware's packing system.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/marrying-linux-and-the-...

Agenda VR3 specs : Processor: 66 MHz 32 bit NEC VR4181 MIPS; Memory: 8 MB of RAM plus 16 MB of Flash Memory

NOTE: This could play mp3's while running an FTP server.

https://web.archive.org/web/20030219081647/http://www.linuxd...

Zaurus packages : https://www.zaurus.org.uk/download/cacko/feed/

Zaurus specs : Intel SA-1110 StrongARM processor running at 206 MHz, has 64 MB of RAM and 16MB Flash

NOTE: This could play MP3's, MP4 at 320x240, run an SSH server, etc.

I'm surprised there aren't more systems out there, but a lot of these linux devices in the 2000's (the aught years) were just other systems cannibalized for linux like the iPaq line. Eventually some people put this together in to something called Familiar Linux and trying to standardize the whole thing. handhelds.org doesn't exist anymore, though.

https://www.drdobbs.com/packing-linux-on-ipaq/199200756

The whole openembedded (OE) system showed promise and came from the guy who made Gentoo, but it got mostly abandoned and merged in to other projects (YOCTO) when he went to work for Microsoft.

https://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Main_Page https://docs.yoctoproject.org/

I kind of gave up on this all when I started developing for iPhone OS 3. It just worked with regards to wireless, and I realized I was more interested in the application layer anyway. Before 2020, you could get an iPhone 5s for about $20 on ebay, so it really had all I wanted including GPS.

There was someone who put together a site called http://pocketworkstation.org/ which isn't in the internet archive (archive.org) that had a whole LaTeX system working in Window Maker on the various Zaurus models. It was a scaled down desktop with 7 bit fonts, but it could be VNC into and used. Fun times.

EDIT: formatting and specs for low end devices

Someone had XFree86 Server ported to Zaurus' Qtopia environment as an app. I didn't understand what `export DISPLAY=:0` meant back then but I could just do that. That was objectively far more awesome compared to their later Windows Mobile offerings developed in cooperation with WILLCOM.

e: ran a search on my disk for "\.ipk" and got a few files. Emacs, gtk2, konqueror, minicom, nano, prism3 driver, xmms, XQt, Blackbox ... why did I have `make` for Zaurus!? There is no way I can satisfy GPL obligations but do anyone want these archived? Right now it's on a nonredundant storage.

Dump it to the Internet Archive. I liberated a couple more fossil (pre-2000) versions of the Borland C++ suite that way.

I had a zipitz2 with OpenWRT and some SDL bsaed UI. I played nethack, chatted on IM via bitlbee and some light IRC client... good times.

If people says a 500Mhz and 16MB are not enough to play music, they couldn't be more wrong.

Not only that but these were older processors which in 2003 and before, it was a SoC in name only. They didn't put 30 to 60 cores on these embedded processors until the mid-2000's.

A similar but more powerful and flexible device is the Core2 from M5Stack. It's expandable through stackable snap-on blocks, USB, multiple I2C and a full set of GPIO and signal pins on a header. It has ESP32 CPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, 2" color touchscreen, microphone, power indicator, 6-Axis IMU, vibration motor, I2S codec, amplifier, speaker, RTC, power button, reset button, 10 x RGB LEDs, SD card slot and 3 programmable soft buttons for ~$45.

There are dozens of snap-on expansion modules which can also be screwed on for permanent use, including a keyboard module, joystick/D-pad, expanded battery, prototyping breadboard breakout, ethernet and various wireless modules including cellular and LORAWAN. I have several of these along with a bunch of the modules and the system is ideal for prototyping up various things super quickly. Amazon sells their own Core2 bundle with an expanded battery module which is pre-programmed with their IOT prototyping platform firmware but you can just overwrite that back to stock firmware which supports FreeRTOS, MicroPython, UIFlow and Arduino frameworks.

https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-core2-esp32-iot-de...

https://www.amazon.com/M5Stack-Core2-ESP32-Development-EduKi...

These used to be a lot cheaper, IIRC I got mine for about $25. I would recommend these to anyone wanting to go beyond "just looking" for ESP development, especially beginners. Yea, you can buy the components you need separately, but having everything integrated in one small package makes it easy to try things out quickly. No breadboards, jumper wires, etc just to have a button to press. And when you're ready to dedicate hardware to the project, you can build it with one of the cheaper modules. But all of the debugging, etc is a lot easier with the big screen, and integrated peripherals. At $45, I'm not so sure, might just be recommended for people who'll really get into ESP development.

The M5Stack Core1 was about $10 cheaper but it's now been replaced with the Core2 which has several nice HW upgrades. It's easy to tell the difference because the Core1 has 3 physical buttons below the screen but the Core2 has 3 backlit soft buttons below the screen.

You can buy dev board ESP32 modules for as little as ~$10 but the M5STack comes with with a bunch of additional hardware that basic ESP32 dev boards don't. As you mention, the upside of the M5Stack Core2 system is all the extra hardware already integrated into a very well thought-thru expandable design. The fit and finish of the Core2 case and all the expansion modules I've gotten is also uniformly excellent.

Here is the QWERTY keyboard for the m5stack:

https://www.robotshop.com/en/m5stack-faces-qwerty-keyboard-p...

AIUI this can't connect directly to the m5stack. You also need the 'Faces bottom board'.

Here's a kit with everything you need, and more: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/face?variant=1729043762389...

The Bom for 1000 pieces is per piece 15$ (and 2.00$ for a 64gbyte sdcard looks optimistic, but difficult to tell typing on my phone). Placing, soldering and assembly is not factored in, wouldnt be surprised if this is another 15$, so production price is 30$, sales price then would be more like 60$.

Edit: is the sd card connector missing in the bom?

Cool project though.

The SD card is on the BOM (it’s on the bottom) but agree that the price for it looks optimistic.

Looking on AliExpress there are lots of unrealistically priced SD cards (1tb for $7!) so I wonder how many of these are just scams where they are formatted to appear bigger than they are, and also if that’s a realistic price that they are using.

Yes, the card is on the bom, but I meant the card connector, the thing that is soldered on the pcb, where you put the card in.

This reminds me (in a good way) of the GPD Win computers.

Obviously smartphones are cool, I have one, I like it, but it annoys me that in some senses they're still not as good as a Windows 98 laptop from 24 years ago. Their version of MS Office isn't as intuitive, there's not the same level of programming language/compiler support, on iOS you're restricted to the App Store, etc.

The GPD Win was the first time I saw a good attempt at a "real" computer that fits in your pocket, and I have one and love it dearly for on-the-train coding, but sadly the pricepoint is a bit high for most people. If I can get something that feels like a real computer for less than $50, I'll be the first in line to buy it.

I wish netbooks were still around with modern hardware. In college, I replaced a powerful laptop with a desktop in my dorm+netbook, and just did remote desktop on the on-campus internet (luckily all the classrooms were still wired for ethernet).

There are options out there. GPD is still making new devices - you can get something from them with an i7 and 16GB of RAM that will fit into a large pocket.

Id rather have a little large size with a palm rest, and a little more power.

Similar setup, but with one of those harder-to-find Vaio netbooks with an AMD APU. No need for remote desktop. Flawless performance in 3D and CAD software on the netbook directly.

I've tried to do work on various pocket-sized computers over the years (HP LX100 palmtop, Motorola Q, HTC G1, Samsung Sidekick 4G) and various netbooks and such.

The most productive device I've had is an Acer Chromebook. For me it is the typing speed, and having a nearly full-sized keyboard makes a huge difference. Adding an SSH client (though you can instead install the Linux subsystem) allows me to access my remote servers where I do development.

While thin and light, the Chromebook doesn't fit in a pocket. But it is not as if I'm randomly hanging out in coffee shops these days trying to do work.

I am on the train a lot (probably too often considering COVID), and often am forced to stand up, basically eliminating any laptop that requires a lap.

The GPD Win has been great because I can hold it and type with it with my thumbs, not wholly dissimilar to a smartphone, but I have full Windows 10 running on there. It's definitely not for everyone, but for me it's been a lot of fun to hack on Pico-8 during a two hour train delay two years ago.

Ah, yes. If you're standing, then something much more compact makes a lot of sense.

I wouldn't mind seeing something with the same form factor as the GPD Win3, but using a relatively low-power processor for better battery life. I suppose that wouldn't drop down the price enough to make it desirable to most of the target market though.

A rooted Android smartphone with Nix is a full Linux computer. I have Node.js, VSCode, C/C++, etc - all while keeping access to all phone capabilities. I haven't tried yet but there shouldn't be any problem with running X server and a full DE (I access the VSCode through Android browser now).

Interesting. I don't use Android anymore but I have like four old phones lying around that I could easily use to play with. I wonder if this has better battery life than the GPD Win, and it would be a free experiment for me.

Well my phone (Samsung S9+) can do like 12 hours of Node.js+VSCode coding while using BT keyboard and mouse. Not bad IMHO.

And the USB-C port of this phone can be used with a usual dock to connect it to a screen and wired peripherals.

> A rooted Android smartphone with Nix is a full Linux computer.

I'm not sure. You still have the "Android ecosystem" interfering with common computer access that I'm using on normal Linux:

- There is no standard V4L2/camera access, only their camera library. I wanted to take photos into tmpfs (to be encrypted asymetrically with GPG and saved to the storage/sent over the network), but the thing still saved them "under the mountpoint" where tmpfs was mounted. There is no v4l2loopback - for example I needed to scan a QR code from a webpage (web.whatsapp.com) and instead of using v4l2loopback like on normal Linux, I had to literally get a physical camera to point at the screen (so something impossible to do remotely).

- There is no Alsa/PulseAudio. I have run alsamixer and the hardware froze when manipulating certain controls (on both Samsum Galaxy Ch@at with stock ROM and Nexus 4 with LineageOS). You cannot trivially add audio output to your scripts with "foo | aplay". Call recording is a mess (normally you would just hook the "monitor" output in pulseaudio). It's much more difficult to implement simple stuff like "when I'm home and it's dark, enter silent mode" - normally I'd just do iwlist scan to check if I'm on the home wifi network, capture a v4l2 frame to check if it's black, and mute the ringing app in pulseaudio.

- The lockscreen is not PAM. You cannot easily add a module (it's like 3 lines of shell using pam_exec on normal Linux) that will poweroff the device after N failed password attempts/entering a special password. If you want to unlock the screen remotely, you literally need to fake the input (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23529460/is-there-a-way-...). All the we-are-reinventing-PAM is littered with WTFs https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/28689/install-ca...

- The storage encryption is something custom, not a standard LUKS/cryptsetup. It was not possible to set different password for a lockscreen vs. the storage encryption, except by a special command-line API. There were several versions of such APIs, if you have used the wrong one, it silently set the wrong key and it was impossible to unlock. Recovery was not possible even when I had the master AES key, as it's not standard LUKS, so you cannot recover with cryptsetup --master-key-file or header backup.

- The way the storage is implemented, full system backup, or configuration backup and versioning is terrible. I simply user "rsync /" on my normal Linux systems.

- You need to run an X-server as an app, so there is no xmodmap to easily change the keyboard layout etc. There was no video player that could do reasonable speed scaling without pitch shifting, and running it from a chrooted system on the X-server app is terrible performance-wise. (I have now learned that there is a native MPV port. Hopefully it's better than the VLC port, and hopefully things like socket control work...)

- There is no VNC server (like x11vnc) except for some paid apps. You can use scrcpy, which always streams the entire screen (VNC transfers only changed rectangles).

And the list goes on and on (note that some of these are a few years old, I'm not using Android since then as I have evaluated this to be unusable. Maybe the situation has changed.)

> That’s about it. Could you do all of this with a smartphone? Yeah, kinda, if you root prepaid Android phone, but even that would cost more than $30.

You can almost certainly do better than $30 on local marketplaces, or by asking friends if they have a disused smartphone sitting around.

reusing is absurdly cost efficient

It'd be great if there were some standardized way to turn older smartphones, whose on-paper computing power is astronomical, into viable Linux servers or controllers.

I've got plenty of old shit phones around that barely respond to touch (or whose displays are just outright unusable) but I'm here considering a new rpi for my next project instead of repurposing one.

There's also a ton of leftover supply of these things, and they have built in power backups, networking, and often lots of shared platform parts (ie, target just one snapdragon based platform and get a swath of compatibility in the galaxy s3 era or whatever).

There is a community effort in the form of postmarketOS but the support for many devices is quite limited https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices

Peripherals using proprietary drivers being the obvious offenders.

Totally cool, but more geared towards rehabilitating old devices than repurposing. Still probably a lot of the work done there could be repurposed (reverse engineered drivers or code for working with a SoC) for plug in server functionality. Thanks for the link, I'll waste some time on it :)

For a server, I feel like termux might be sufficient?

For a server, I likely don't need or even want most of the stuff that's on a stock android install (or even kernel). GPS, audio, graphics drivers, mic, camera, SMS, etc are all worthless at best. Bluetooth (and maybe wifi, if you're USB-plugged) represent explicit unnecessary attack surface for a device that I'll be running with dodgy ported software inside my home network.

Good for proof-of-concepting tho, I bet.

This does remind me that I have a OnePlus 3T laying around in a drawer that would be an excellent degoogled Android device. And my old HTC Dream / Tmobile G1 that I have Android 2.2 on if I wanted a full keyboard...

One of my old smartphones and a portable/folding keyboard would be my pick.

I do love the look of the form-factor though. Want to need it.

For those interested in getting something going off the shelf:

Keyboard Featherwing: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4818

Linux-capable Feather: https://www.crowdsupply.com/groboards/giant-board

Add a lithium polymer battery of your choosing to compute on the go. (Also possible to add WiFi or SMS with a Featherwing for people that are interested in that. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4264 etc.)

OK, it's not really off the shelf. No doubt many hours involving pulling out your hair to set up the device tree are involved before you can do anything fun.

Like the idea. Reconsider the keyboard. If we presume the target users are other than first-world, the likelihood of only have one hand or missing fingers increases significantly.

The keyboard becomes very cumbersome.

(source: found out the hard way when brought toys that require two hands or all fingers to play with, in worn-torn countries.)

Do you mean the keyboard being split across the screen would be hard to use for those people?

Both of my hands are quite dexterous, but I still often find myself typing with one finger if it's on a smartphone (I'm still not used to typing with my thumbs), or one hand if I'm on a normal full sized keyboard (such as when I'm eating or snacking). I've owned a split keyboard before (MS Natural Elite) and it was fine, but I'm unlikely to ever buy a split keyboard again.

yes. will have a hard time kbding on split keyboard while looking at the screen,which is directly under their hand movements.

the keyboard could do with having a flat base as well. it looks like it would rock all over the place when you type, even when using it with two hands

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Nice.

As a non-brogrammer, a battery-powered, pocket Linux/BSD computer without a "phone" built into it that boots from SD card/USB stick is exactly what I am looking for.

No GUI required.

Willing to pay more than $15.

For those of you who are intrigued by this cyberdeck, there is an active community around such DIY small computing platforms. Check out https://cyberdeck.cafe/ and especially their discord server. There are tons of amazing projects there.

This is like the "budget" posts on /r/DIY: "porch renovation for only $200!" > proceeds to use the industrial sawmill they have in the garage that costs $100k

Not sure where you're getting that idea. All of the parts are purchased, then assembled. There's really no tooling beyond what most electronics enthusiasts would have at home.

Where do you find F1C100s for $.75 @1ku? How much more would it cost to upgrade the SoC to something bit more modern, like V3S/R11 (or others from that family)?

https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/03/30/allwinner-s3-camera-...

> I’ve been told V3, V3S, S3, S3L, R11 are all the same chip, but with packaging variations.

This is $15 BoM cost (ie, parts), not including assembly, packaging, shipping, etc etc. So not what most people think when they see the headline. Still, it is a nice design

nor profit - traditionally as a rule of thumb one doubles the price to cover that, and then again to cover retail markup

And this is the BOM cost at qty 10,000.

I see the creator understands economics: "Low Price! It costs $10,000 USD to build one of these. The ten thousandth one costs $15"

The first one costs $10k? It seems a bit disingenuous. All the electronics and PCB manufacture is more expensive in single quantities, but I would be shocked if it wasn't still within 2x-3x of $15 (namely $30-$45).

The big initial expense, as far as I can tell, is the custom enclosure and keyboard. Maybe there's an interim design that doesn't require injection molded parts?

A display mounted on a flat surface between your hands seems like a ready path to neck trauma.

You mean, like a smartphone or a portable console ?

No, much worse, because you are not able to lift it up in front of your eyes while typing.

Why not?

That F1C100s CPU is the same one that's used for Business Card Linux [1] as well as a bunch of cheap ($20~40) handheld retro gaming consoles that run Linux and emulators. It can handle emulating NES, most SNES games, Sega Genesis & Game Gear, Game Boy Color and most GBA games, even a few PS1 games like FFVII.

I bet it wouldn't take too much work to port the Miyoo Custom Firmware [2] over to it.

Also, the CPU can be overclocked to 700-800mhz pretty trivially. It gives a nice little bump in performance and it doesn't even have much effect on the power draw.

[1]: https://github.com/thirtythreeforty/businesscard-linux

[2]: https://github.com/TriForceX/MiyooCFW

One comparable here is the Raspberry Pi 400 at $70. That doesn't have a screen but has a lot more CPU, etc.

Doesn't have a battery either, although there's room in the case for one or two flat cells from a laptop pack plus a charge controller.

Two things:

I'm not clear on why the first one would cost $10k. The enclosure, maybe?

If he were going to sell these, the rule of thumb I heard was to charge the cost of parts x 10. (Edit: maybe a factor of 2? I forget.)

It's going to be tooling for the enclosure, and if there is other NRE to be considered for PCB testing (ICT, solder stencil, etc).

With a $15 BoM cost, using a domestic contract manufacturer, this would probably come out to be no cheaper than $30/unit with very decent volumes, and that doesn't factor in your profit. Need to remember to pay someone to assemble it and test it.

I was wondering the same thing.

PCBs are pretty cheap at this size, and the components wouldn't be THAT much more expensive to grab in smaller quantities.

If someone would get a group buy started just for the components and 3d case files I'd hapilly sign up and 3d print the thing.

I assume it's tooling costs for the custom enclosure + rubber membrane but I too was confused why that was never clarified.

Would be nice if he broke out the $10k. My guess is mostly the cost of an injection mold for the enclosure.

Mold for the silicon keyboard - the first five keyboards is going to be about $6k. After that, each keyboard is about a dollar a piece.

Same with the plastic enclosure.

Enclosure at small scale can be 3D printed. Use FDM for mechanical fitment checks, then make in SLA resin printers for first couple clear case prototypes. I wish I could do keyboard as easy...

Going by their comment history, I think this is the article's author.

You might want to make a top-level comment, like "This is the author, ask me anything".

There should be some industry-subsidized program where upon (a) it’s free to 4th-7th graders and available for pickup at local stores using a thumbprint; (b) it should have free packet connectivity to Internet, perhaps through something like Sidewalk, the FindMy network and the piggyback WiFi networks that cable coNpanies [sic] have started installing into the neighbor’s “WiFi routers” to support their new CLEC+ mobile service; (c) if a youth spends enough time working on one in certain ways (perhaps a minimum of two hours per day on average in Emacs/Mu/VIM or certain types of nCurses variants of Jupytr, Mathematica, VisiCalc, SQLiteStudio, etc… as verified by signals emitted to the Cloud from the ROM/BSP), then they receive eligibility to go pickup a progression of “snap-on” upgrades (7” LCD, storage, 5GUW, etc), eventually (after thousands of hours) leading to a “snap-on” compatible rPi400 as they’re getting ready for high school. Yeah, it’s pretty anemic compared to where we really should be as a society right now, but it’s a lot more realistic than giving out locked-down $300 iPads equipped with MDM and supporting infrastructure to 4th graders that starve during the Summer (when school lunches are closed).

I'm holding out for an MNT Pocket Reform. Though it won't be $15.

https://pocket-reform.ghost.io/

weirdly the most info is in LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/pocket-reform

The idea is great, but the layout of the keyboard is such that, well, I wouldn't use this keyboard. It's extremely inconvenient IMHO to split it in the middle. You will have to either retrain your hands, or keep looking right and left.

I realize this might be due to some combination of constraints, but $15 or $1500 - the form factor matters.

> Allwinner F1C100s SoC

I figured it would be one of these parts, at this point they are pretty old, but capable. And available apparently.

> I’ve already written a driver for a 800x480 display, and it could work over SPI. This display is somewhat expensive, with a bare panel coming in at $12

Alibaba has some 800x480 displays for as low as $4.5-6.5 (@1ku), I wonder if those are just bullshit or is there some catch. They don't have SPI interface, so driving them might be bit more involved? But the SoC should have the hardware for that, so its just a matter of writing drivers?

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/800x480-resolution-5-...

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/5-inch-6-O-clock-view...

This is a neat idea and clever execution, but I just can't imagine ever using this over like a donated out-of-date laptop or something. I'd love to see something at like a 50-100 price point that could theoretically be more usable (more than 47 keys, more screen resolution, built in wifi)

I've sometimes thought about going to some small village somewhere and teaching interested locals how to code and use computers. I would need small, cheap devices that I can just replace whenever they get lost/stolen. Also standardized enough that I don't have to spend a ton of time doing hardware support. If someone brought a >$20 fully-contained device to market then I could buy 20 of them and plan a 6 month trip abroad. Being not super-useful as general purpose machines is a bonus.

This idea's been kicking around in my head since the OLPC was announced, but nobody's delivered yet. Chromebooks are too expensive.

It would be nice to have. One thought I can't shake is how wasteful the world is with perfectly good hardware that's "obsolete". For instance, I have an iPhone 5C that I practically can't give away which is way more powerful than the idea presented here. But because the hardware is undocumented and locked down and it's stupid difficult to replace the battery, there doesn't seem to be a reasonable way to turn it into a cheap computer, even though it really should be possible. (To be honest, I'd probably still use it as my phone if it still received security updates and I could replace the battery)

I find out-of-date used Chromebooks are available for $50.

Can I buy a lot of 20 of them? All in the same model and in the same rough shape?

Important to note that the quoted $15 doesn't include shipping, assembly, tax or any other costs.

For the same actual cost I'd go on EBay/Craigslist/FB Marketplace and buy an unlimited number of old computers with 1000x the specs of this one that are going to be otherwise placed into a landfill.

And then carry those old computers around in your pocket?

Sure. Buy a bunch of old Android phones for even less and root them.

Reminds me of the Pocket Chip (https://opensource.com/article/17/2/pocketchip-or-pi) which is a pretty fantastic little device that shouldn't exist.

I think it’s actually out of production right now. There’s still stock available here and there, but Next Thing Co. went out of business.

I still own one, but it needs a better 3d-printed keyboard with better keys.

This is super cool. I'm going to have to "make my own Linux SBC" at some point, just to be able to say I did it. It was something I always wanted to do as kid after hearing my dad's stories of designing and building computers with his uncles in the 70's and 80's from parts catalogs.

Admittedly, having the whole system on a single package for the most part makes this decidedly simpler. Up until this point the hardest thing for me was doing the SoC <-> DDR3 traces in KiCad. They're remarkably less forgiving than PCIe, but I guess that is the curse of modern RAM chips not using differential IO. That and figuring how how to solder BGA. Making my first attempt with some cheaper FPGAs and a hotplate pretty soon.

Quite sad that this is the Allwinner SoC without a FPU in it, making distro options more limited. Something like the v3s has similar specs but has a new enough ARM core to have an FPU making it possible to run armhf/armv7 distros instead of armel (debian naming)

Something that I have always wanted was an SMS ONLY device.

A device, kind of like the SideKick (remember Danger invented Android, got bought by Google - then the founder was paid ~$90,000,000 severance from Google for coercing a female colleague to be his 'sex slave' -- Yeah, that Danger, Andy Rubin.)

but I just want a device that only sends and receives SMS and thats it.

Can this machine accept a SIM in a future iteration?

(I interviewed with Danger back in the day... but I had the freaking flu and felt like death, and I failed the interview as I was reeling from the flu. It was super stupid of me to go to the interview whilst sick, but I REALLY wanted to work at Danger...)

I'd love a modern RIM 850 that could do all my messaging (Discord, Telegram, SMS) and nothing else. Keep the 850 formfactor, keyboard, that amazing thumbwheel, but give it something like e-ink and great connectivity. Hell, throw a WiFi hotspot in it if we absolutely must.

And a scrambling MAC... every N minutes.

I've always wanted a receive only messaging device. Iridium still supports satellite pagers which would be perfect for that, but the hardware isn't manufactured anymore and you can't get service without a big plan attached (like DoD)

Haven't I seen this before ? http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/images/e70open.jpg

Would be nice to see an equivalent “minimum viable trustable computer” that used only parts from “trusted” supply chains (pick your own definition of “trusted”, but it might for example exclude generic parts marketplaces).

Pinedio stack is probably the best cheap option, as it has been fully reverse engineered, including the radios- no firmware blobs. Similar to m5 stack but riscV core.

For an OS you have nuttx, but for the memory size, Oberon ports (A2) might be feasible.

https://betrusted.io/ is pretty much that. Initial HW platform is there, not sure how much of the SW is ready

Yes, that sort of thing! Its claim to trustworthiness seems to be based on the idea that its CPU runs on an FPGA so you can audit the source code for that and compile it yourself. But the underlying FPGA looks like a proprietary Xilinx device. Who’s auditing that?

"Holy f*ck don't use lithium"

Safety first. Ha!

If you cranked up the maximum swap size, would you theoretically be able to build the kernel? (Is it truly a viable Linux machine if it can't build its own kernel?)

What would be the expected build time? Days? Months?

Who builds their own kernel other than enthusiasts? Even companies that develop their own kernel branch don't build it on every machine that runs it. What practical difficulty is imposed if you can't?

ARM926EJ is pretty capable, I had one in my Intel XScale based PDA.

I'd say a day at max if it had enough memory.

What I'd love for someone to share is the MVP Linux machine I can use to run PiHole... Starter Raspberry Pis (e.g. by Canakit) ... are >$150 CAD on amazon.ca which just seems so expensive.

the canakit packages are luxury items with a bunch of stuff you don't need.

get a pi, an sd card, a power supply, and a cardboard box to shove it into. you don't need any of the other stuff they include.

also get an old pi, not one of the most recent. maybe ask around, lots of folks have a box of older pis. i'd certainly love to get rid of all of the 1s and 2s i've got.

Mine runs on a years-old Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 2. A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ (which has an ethernet port), SD Card and case is about £40 at pihut, that's CAD70

A Zero 2 W with wireless is half that or less including the case, SD Card and power supply.

I run PiHole on a pi zero for like 2 years now. It costed me around $20 when I bought it, retail price, delivery included. Works like a charm

As an alternative, for iOS folks this might be an interesting pocket solution as well:

https://getutm.app

Give me a 80x24 font terminal and framebuffer support for SD2/video/images/PDF, and I'm sold.

This has no internet support, but who cares as I can just rsync the NNTP dir from/to slrn in my laptop and read good stuff offline, and just answer over the laptop, too. Or, well, an Atheros dongle would work fine.

For coding, JimTCL with or without SDL2 is fun, and, for gaming, text adventures and roguelikes would rock here.

The screen is just too low rez for an 80x24 terminal. You would need a 3x9 font, which I know from experience are close to unreadable. 320x240 displays more often ran at 40x24 which is too small for the modern world.

At the end of the article he talked about upgrading to a 640x480 display which would make the 80x24 terminal a real possibility. The surprisingly expensive 800x480 display would be even better, you would have the possibility of running a square 9x9 font, or more likely increasing the console resolution to 100x24.

I ran 80x25 fine under the zipit z2 but had to place it near your face as if it was a Game Boy.

But the Z2 Nethack build was patched to support a ~64x16 res (68x20 I think), so that worked well among some forth interpreter and well, gopher clients and IRC.

The custom Slashem I built didn't have that patch, (and the patch was doable for sure), but I was lazy and just ran setfont.

Z machine games were perfectly playable on 64x16.

Would buyers prefer this split keyboard layout, or a blackberry-style layout?

Personally, my ideal handheld would be something like my old Nokia E61, but with open hardware, mainline Linux, at least .11n WiFi, and isolated 4G/5G cellular. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_E61

This is cool, but Flipper Zero is in my opinion, cooler.

https://flipperzero.one/

or this:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go-advance-black-edit...

and it does come with a more digestible price tag

The Flipper Zero does look fun, but $160 is pretty expensive alas, but I understand injection moulding doesn't come cheap.

I really like their blog on how the moulds etc. were made too.

Also iirc the firmware is now open.

Molds aren't cheap, but as someone who've been around while F0 was created it's not that imo. It's setting up the pipeline, shitty PCBs in batches of hundreds, fuckups with parts, etc.

If you do a couple of prototypes it's fine. If you want to make a thousand or two, you are in a world of pain.

This would be much more minimum and much more viable if you just assume the user can acquire "a USB keyboard" for little or nothing.

I'm in love this device and would pay 10x the cost to have one if it included Wifi and QMK firmware for the keyboard. Bluetooth and NFC would be great too, but not critical. The keyboard reminds me a lot of the Atreus42, which is ideal for me. Too many of these small devices follow a conventional keyboard layout (looking at you, ClockworkPi DevTerm and Popcorn Pocket Computer).

It seems the author is now redirecting the blog post to a static image, presumably to screw with HN even more: https://github.com/bbenchoff/bbenchoff.github.io/commit/9e77...

no, I'm just testing something out. I changed it back. Yes I test in prod.

Picture this:

- monocoque anodized aluminum housing with coin screw o-ring battery port that houses an 18650; -silicon gasketed polycarbonate faceplate held with stainless hex button head screws, waterproof to 100 meters - tactile clicky button keys beneath a silicone membrane for waterproof-ness. - detachable rubberized wifi antenna.

A feller can dream...

oh and Qi charging so you don't have to open the case to charge.

I'd like to sign up but I'm still waiting for the Pyra handheld, er ... pre-ordered 2016 [1]

Pro-tip: Get help and factor in delays when making stuff :-)

[1] https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

I used to love my Alphasmart for writing. I don't know if this keyboard would work very well for a touch typist, but maybe. The AA batteries are a real bonus for me. Plus, with Linux in it, it could do a lot more. I do agree with others that wifi would be a killer feature to add to this thing.

There was a time when the first question asked of such a device would be "Can it run Doom?"

If you don't remember that time, then I guess I'm getting old.

In any case, it's nearly a useless question these days: very few things with a chip are so dumb they can't run Doom.

We need a new metric.

"Can it run crysis?"

The display price in the BoM is absolutely not where the market is at today… I'm not even sure it has ever been there. I'd love to have more info on where they are supposedly getting a panel for this price.

1/ This is cool. I love it.

2/ As per the very start of the article — and this is off topic I’m afraid but… — let’s say I did want to root a prepaid Android phone. What is the best phone I should go for?

One reason I'd love one of these (or a generally cheap low power linux PC) is just so I could e.g. muck around with e.g. code golf or advetnt-of-code programming puzzles on my commute.

I'm guessing there are GUI things that would fit in that thing?

Gmenu2X / GmenuNX is a simple launcher program designed for small displays that runs well on that CPU.

This is the fork that I've worked with: https://github.com/MiyooCFW/gmenunx

Edit: here is the original: http://mtorromeo.github.io/gmenu2x/

I'm wondering if we can use the same principle to design a miniature cell phone: can only text and make phone calls, very small screen, small keys, etc, using cheap components.

I've been thinking about this, too. On Linux this looks like a configuration nightmare of bodging together USB GSM/3G/4G/5G modems and piped commands [0].

No doubt there's a better way.

[0] https://www.techytalk.info/send-receive-sms-using-gsm-modem-...

Yes, then sell it to minimalists for $300: https://www.thelightphone.com/

Wow the price point is way above. I'm thinking about the mini phone in the movie Taken 2. I actually found a website to purchase a year ago but couldn't find it right now.

This looks great, but I am not sure how would I use a computer without cursors and pgup / pgdown / home / end keys at very least? Am I missing something?

Reminds me of Pocket C.H.I.P, which apparently still has new stock for sale. I never used mine as much as wanted to though... largely I think due to the keyboard.

That sounds pretty cool actually. I've used a shell or ssh on my phone; it's fun,but the lack of a physical keyboard makes things incredibly awkward.

I like the cold war tech aesthetic of this. I can imagine 1 million soviet troops being outfitted with a handheld MVP computer each as part of their kits.

I love that keyboard, that is how I want the keyboard in my laptop to be: track pad in the center .. with split keyboard on the sides. 17 inch laptop

> battery life is long enough

what's 'long enough'? i'd love a on-the-go linux with e-ink and very low power chip so i can use it for a week.

The NiMH batteries are likely in series. They have a capacity of 600mAh. The Lichee Nano that this board is based on has a power consumption (with display of 250mA[0]) [0] https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Seeed%20Technolo... So even if you can't fully discharge the NiMH batteries you should comfortably get an hour of battery life out of this thing, much more, if you don't use the display.

The enclosure pricing seems optimistic. Or is it possible to get a mold designed, cast, and parts manufactured at ~ $1000 for 1000 pieces?

very cool. My only quibble would be the keyboard layout. split is completely fine, but the actual placement of keys does not seem ideal. Assuming that the origin of the thumbs would be bottom left and right, I'd rotate the layout of the keys a few degrees to match that reach. Hard to know without actually holding it and trying.

How much would it change the cost to put in a Sochip S3, which has 128MB of RAM and can run at 800-900 MHz (if not more)?

Suppose you have all the parts and a workbench, how long would it take to assemble one unit from start to finish?

Does it need binary blobs? Would be a shame such a device becoma frozen in time because one can't update it.

looks cute, it took me a while to figure out what's the user case(or the market)

so far I have no idea where I need it

Love it. Text says price is for 10000 units, BOM price column header says 1000 units. Which is it?

I loved hackaday back when I was in undergrad :) Very inspiring to see cool projects like this.

Needs an escape key on the keeb

The best part about this is that it appears to take AAA batteries.

mmmmm.... me want! I'll buy it if he puts it out there.

"the mechanical keyboard mafia" is the most startlingly accurate phrase I have read today.

Where are the cursor keys? Back to vi-keys I guess

to my understanding the f1c200s just twice the ram and otherwise a drop in repacment. however I am not sure about cost.

I don't need it, but want it :)

but what would you do with it?

Post it on HN, of course.

Where is the Kickstarter?

Or you can buy a old android phone on eBay for the same price. Phones have made computing accessible than any other effort to make it cheaper ala OLPC. There are parallels to capitalists making the world a better place than religions and philosophies.

RYF certification?

I would buy it.

I think this could even be almost with a few small changes. I think there is room for a new class of device in between smartphones and fixed function machines like TV remotes.

If I bought an OSHW product and it shipped with this as the controller, or I saw one of these just hanging out running an irrigation system, I'd say "Yep, they sure did an awesome design there.

I would ditch the SD card as part of the BOM. I don't trust that $2 SD card for anything but read only root operation. Lots of people would rather use a SanDisk they already have, so I'd say the cheap card should be an optional addon.

With the money saved from that, and maybe by just bumping up the price a tiny bit, could you tack WiFi/BT?

This sounds slightly insane, but what if you slapped an ESP32 module on there?

Not only could it serve as a WiFi and Bluetooth interface, but the power draw can be microscopic.

You could have the option to have it always running. That means it could be the real time clock.

RTCs are needed more and more for various security related things, and are very important for data logging.

Instead of breaking out GPIO for the "shitty ad-on" connector, break out ESP32 GPIO.

Now that add-on can run IN LOW POWER MODE!!! You could make an incredibly low power thing that logs to RAM, and wakes up once a day to 4G upload it!

It could also serve as the battery level ADC monitor if you don't already have one.

It could serve as the USB device for the C port, so you could plug it in to a a host machine AND have the spare USB-A port.

It would also let you really deeply control and test network access. Since you can write your own ESP firmware, and it has GPIO, potentially you can implement your own IP-over-LoRa hackery with addon modules or something, that works transparently.

It's large RAM could also be exposed as a filesystem for tiny frequently updated things, that only need to be semi-persistent.

Plus, you could give it a debugging firmware and use it as a USB to serial interface for debugging. The whole platform kind of becomes software defined!!

You might need some kind of recovery jumper in case bad ESP firmware told the main processor to shut off, preventing you from fixing it. But that could just be a DIP switch to disable the ESP, which would also act as an RF kill.

Going eeeevvven fuurrrtherrr*, that NiMH is probably the second biggest weakness here.

I think there would be more demand if you swap it for an 18650 or lithium AA, even if it cost more.

If you look around, a lot of people really love that form factor. You could save a bit of money by just letting people use their own 18650.

Or, even better, you could use a 2.4V LTO battery. These are $3.30 in QTY10 on AliExpress. They can be float charged. They have a linear voltage curve. Incredibly safe, and they can last 7000 to 20k cycles.

Set your step down regulator for the float voltage and you are good to go if it's accurate enough. Use an IO pin that can turn it off and you can terminate for extra life.

With a simple dumb charging regime, you will have no oddities when running right off a solar panel through a 12v to USB converter.

Now you have the perfect offgrid tech tool!

If the extension interface has a good mechanical connection(Like a screw) and 3D-printable addon modules, a lot of standalone devices could go away.

OBD scan tool? Multimeter? Geiger counter? Nope, just sell these in a kit with a preattached module.

For niche hardware it might actually be cheaper to rebrand these than to do your own interface, and these are way more flexible.

Lastly, the ESP32 can handle audio, and audible alerts are important.

But beyond that, walkie talkies EPICALLY SUCK. It would add cost, but the thing could almost totally replace FRS radios, and have 10x the battery life and as much range as you want with Wi-Fi mesh, with just a tiny speaker and mic, or even without one, just using bluetooth.

Plus, sound is pretty essential for use in a game console.

Currently, there are basically no devices in this class since things like the Zipit Z2 went away. So I am super excited to see how this goes!!

I already have some ideas for a menu system that could make this usable for non-hackers, without going to a full GUI.

WiFi?

> I’m changing the title of this page just to screw with mods on the orange website

Loving it! What orange website could they be talking about?

I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000? (Presuming access to a 3d printer and a reasonably cheap PCB fab company)

Advanced HN mod troll: write a dozen slightly different titles and pick a random one on page load

Pick one deterministically based on src IP address for extra annoyance.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Ars Technica basically does this (with two headlines), since the Conde Nast acquisition. Drives me nuts, and makes a significant portion of the post-article discussion incomprehensible.

There's something so hilarious about the idea of an HN thread full of people who only read the title, while the website is A/B testing ten different titles.

> I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000?

A Raspberry Pi Zero?

Raspberry Pi Foundation does the "minimum order of 1000" and passes the savings on to you. Try and buy all the individual components of a RPi Zero and see how much it costs. It is way more than $15.

P.S. The RPi Zero does not come with a display and keyboard like the computer in this article does. So, we are talking about two different types of computers.

I was thinking about the fact that 40 years ago there was the Sinclair ZX80, a $100 computer that you could hook to your TV and there's not really a whole lot in that space/price point¹ now other than the hobbyist Raspberry Pi/arduino/other hobbyist machines. I'd have to think that it's possible to make a consumer-grade PC that you hook up to your own monitor for around $100, although I guess the cost of a Windows license is an obstacle to that. Surely someone could build a windows PC (or I guess Linux) that's inside a keyboard enclosure for around $100 that could be commercially successful now.

⸻

1. We can ignore inflation adjustments because computer prices have generally stayed flat or gone down (the rule used to be that the PC you wanted was around $2000–3000 and nowadays if we're talking about a desktop system, assuming one even specs such a thing, it's less than that).

> Loving it! What orange website could they be talking about?

In case that's a serious question: what website has an orange theme, and an aggressively enforced rule against editorialising submission titles?

Ever since I've found that I can change the color of the top bar in my profile, the site has been every color but orange to me. :D

I would also want to know. Because news.ycombinator.com is quite selective about the enforcement.

The comment was pure sarcasm - but kind of you to check!

well yeah, but why would they want to block out the "orange website"?

As the practical build here shows you simply need 15$ and one capable engineer. To be fair you'll also need something to tool a case out of, be it FDM or extractive machining.

Cardboard & glue will do. Otherwise, carve it out of balsa.

... access to a 3d printer

Printer filament itself costs about $10USD per pound. And then there is the inevitable one or two misprints.

Not to mention the time needed to print the item.

If you looking for cheap, low volume 3D printing ain't it.

3d-printing is very expensive in terms of variable costs but super cheap in terms of fixed costs. For low volumes, the math is usually in favor of 3d printing.

http://www.orangepi.org/

Pretty much a possible competitor. I have several OrangePi boards...and they run linux and cost me around $15.

More powerful, but no keyboard and display.

Totally agree. But are they really DELIVERING a final product with keyboard, main board and display for $15? THAT is the real question.

Said the guy or gal typing on a keyboard and reading the response on a display. Solved problem?

What was the title previously? I'm not sure I understand the significance of the current title.

Some people really hate Hacker News for no intelligent reasons that I can tell.

They usually hate it because of the people who post here

The new title is "I’m changing the title of this page just to screw with mods on the orange website"

I don't get it, is this just some sort of experiment for messing with forums or is there an actual product here?

I can't even buy a keyboard for $15 anymore since inflation took off.

So yeah if in fact this is a real product I'll throw a few bucks at it to help make it happen.

What is the recent trend of website users not using the actual names of the websites they use?

    >the orange site
    >the bird site

Are these pet names? Is this passive aggressive contempt? Or is this an inside joke that I don’t get?

I would skew towards inside joke pet names

For a few reasons.

Firstly, sometimes a shot needs to be taken at said websites and there are people who work there who will be reading it.

Secondly, because inside jokes are the best jokes.

> the orange site

This one isn't new to me. My old boss used to call it that.

Adding dramatic flair is a timeless hobby. Like most things, it gets shorter with time.

It's basically:

That den of capitalist hubris, the Mart of Wally

For a new era.

It's passive aggressive contempt. They're pretty commonly used in leftist online circles to gently insult the original sites.

> What orange website could they be talking about?

I wouldn't know, my topcolor is B5DB5D.

For q1, nothing: shipping would be more than that.

ah, someone who shares my disdain for "hacker" "news"

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yet here you are

I believe per HN rules, the title here should be changed to properly reflect the title of the article?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com