The HackberryPi CM5 handheld computer | Hacker News Reader

The HackberryPi CM5 handheld computer

github.com

257 pointskristianpaul92 comments

> There are dual speakers on board, it is needed to pair with the bluetooth audio module to make sound

This is cursed

For real. For the kind of sound I'd expect out of this, the pwm channels on the rpi work just fine. If you want better sound, the rpi supports i2s.

The design artifacts are released with a liberal license, it shouldn't be TOO hard to fix that. Though I've never worked with SPI or I2S sound chips before.

> As we know, it's always been somehow difficult or tricky to add sound for RaspberryPi. Some use gpio to generate pwm to make sound for speakers, some use I2S audio module to generate sound for speakers. But they all have some shortcomings. PWM generated from gpios on raspberryPi have much noise that make the speakers nealy usable, and I2S audio module will occupy the very precious gpio resoureces(usually take 3 gpio pins). And in some operating system there is no driver for these pwm or I2S audio module. Due to the reasons above this is how I solve the sound problem. [1]

[1] https://github.com/ZitaoTech/HackberryPiCM5/tree/main/Speake...

Ok, digging into the schematic, I think I see the problem.

Almost all of the normally free GPIO is eaten up by a DPI (Display Parallel Interface) connection to the screen.

The screen should instead use the currently unused MIPI pins if you're already at the level of sophistication of laying out PCIe and USB3 traces.

That gives you back nearly all of your GPIO to use for stuff like I2S, and you can then even expose more non USB externally than just that one stemma port.

On top of that, for a project like this, I would disagree with the quality you get out of the pwm as audio thing. It's not audiophile by any means, but neither is some cheap Bluetooth receiver chip, and it's certainly good enough for the speakers that weren't designed for this case.

still just use a inexpensive usb to 3.5?

Far more complex because then you'd have to have a USB 3.X hub/switch IC on board unless you want to consume a USB interface. And USB hub/switches are notoriously not the greatest.

I'm not saying I like Bluetooth, but the justification isn't that bad.

When I've used i2s it has required setting spi clocks that made my spi devices not function. While it does have all of these IO buses, using more than one at a time is a bit of tetris. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some hardware constraint making i2s impossible.

I'd say the opposite. There's one interface, BT; pair your headphones, pair the internal speakers, there can't be a conflict, nor two places to look at.

It's a wireless device that is burning battery making negotiations with itself and wasting precious bt bandwidth in the process, and since most of Linux Bluetooth stack is user space stuff provided by the wm/de managers it guarantees no console sound compatibility without another layer of work. I think I could live without a pre console system beep but the other issues are pretty major oversights.

Be grateful the keyboard doesn’t require pairing hahaha

Iirc, CM5 cannot really deep sleep like phones or tablets do (at milli watts). Meaning you can't really use it for anything really portable - and that's a huge problem. I think RK3588 does, and it's a big win.

Edit: Sorry I meant deep sleep, not idle. Corrected.

> I think RK3588 does, and it's a big win.

I'll put that down as a TIL :-)

I'm really wanting a clamshell-like device with console controls in addition to the qwerty keyboard, with a large 7" screen (even if resolution is lower than 1920x768) based on the RK3588.

I want what the Pandora/GP2X could have been: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(computer) but with a larger screen and a more easily acquired SoC. Using replaceable 18650s (and charging via USB-C) is on my requirements as well.

I want to play games, basically, but set up my own linux distro for it, complete with mame and some ROMs.

If it can do games other than mame, then so much the better!

Anyone have any ideas?

I suppose you can DIY this with the RK3588 - but I haven't used it myself.

I had previously experimented with the CM5, and found out that you can't really use it for anything portable without attaching a heavy battery. With its excellent software stack, CM5 could have been everywhere if they had gotten this right.

It seems to be a really hard problem. Deep sleep even with Raspberry Pi Zero and Pico product lines has been problematic. I hoped they would make Pico 2 deep sleep better, but it still needs external deep sleep RTC like DS3231 to make it truly useful.

The Raspberry Pi SoCs optimised for cost rather than power consumption (or maximum performance). This is an engineering trade off, not a criticism. More power partitioning requires more area, more complexity in design and verification, and more expensive external components to support the internal voltage domains.

Another comment mentions the RP2xxx microcontrollers. If you look at those, they are optimised for compute power and data throughput rather than low power operation. I think it's a reasonable choice - the Pico boards are pretty sturdy and the original target is people running MicroPython, Arduino, etc rather than looking for µA standby currents.

I miss netbooks as well.

ClockworkPi's uConsole comes pretty close:

https://www.clockworkpi.com/uconsole

I have a couple of these - they work great for dev systems and its occasionally fun to load up PICO8 and have a bit of a bash..

I also have a couple of OpenPandora's but I stopped using them when I got a Steam Deck.

These projects are cool but there is no reason for them not to be using RK3588

Besides brand awareness what could justify foregoing mainline Linux kernel and superior performance

RK3688 looks incredible based on leaks and could make the CM5 form factor practical instead of the novelty it is now

If you don't specifically want the Blackberry keyboard, there's also https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-uconsole

This also supports Radxa CM5 which is twice as powerful/watt as the Raspberry CM5.

Though you'll need USB hub for internet (WiFi/Eth adapter) and audio.

Also shipping takes a few months, which is kinda scary when you don't know the tariffs that far in advance.

I have one of these. It's so pretty. But the keyboard is borderline unusuable. It's a lot smaller than it looks, the keys are tiny, and have no feedback whatsoever. They're just squashy rubber. Like the ZX Spectrum, but a quarter the size.

Awful.

I had waited forever for this to stop being a pre-order, like literal years, and by the time I gave up, I'd come to the conclusion that the keyboard layout would just be a nightmare and I wouldn't use it, think I made the right decision, even if I do look at it occasionally and think it looks like a really nice cyberdeck.

I've got big hands and I think the allure of pocketable full-keyboard devices is just not for me.

The waiting time is horrendous though. Mine arrived 8 months after I purchased it but beyond that, those are absolutely great. I stopped carrying a laptop in my backpack, just one of those with an additional expansion board and an HDMI port. My work involves a ton of data which I can't fit into memory so in all cases, my computer is just a terminal to a large server somewhere. So Clockwork ticks all the boxes for me. The one thing I wish they had thought about is an easy access to the CM and be able to swap them for different use cases: when I want to preserve battery and speed is not a big deal - cm5. When I want some additional power - pull out the cm4 and toss in a 5 instead.

I wish there was access to swap the batteries without having to unscrew the back plate. I got mine after the long waiting period and was initially excited but eventually it became a dust collector as I don't have a usecase for it. It is also quite heavy to lug around in a pocket or something like that.

Tbh I never thought of that but yeah, it would be nice. Hypothetically if you have a 3d printer, you can modify this guy's designs and add a removable battery cover: https://github.com/strtfnst/uConsole-Parts

Personally I got the lora-gps-wifi-sdr expansion board and I found that he had a design to cover the otherwise exposed top of the port, I modified it a bit so that I have direct access to the power button(his covers the power indicator, which I hate) and trimmed it off a bit cause it was too bulky for my likings.

That said, you have a point. The reason why I've got a rpi4 as opposed to 5 is partially because of the thermals but also partially because of the battery life. You know what, I might actually work on that when I have some time to spare.

This sounds like another device that will end up in a drawer, as an experiment it looks good but not sure what you are going to do on a 4" inch display that cannot idle at low milliwatts

Yeah that's a problem, I "want" a lot of tech too but I also know I would never use it on the regular. Gadgets are cool, but it's more of a "I want to have it" than a "I really need to use it". Same with e.g. the Flipper Zero, it's a cool device but other than some fiddling I'd never use it.

I have a bunch of Raspberry Pi's in a drawer, lol. Although I did pull one out the other day to set up a PiHole.

Seems to be the case with most of the Pi projects left these days. It's turned into a bit of a "oh cool, thats neat" thing that nobody is practically using day to day as there's better alternatives that are cheaper and/or better.

An interesting alternative to the SQFMI Beepy / Beepberry [0][1] which is just a rpi zero but has a Sharp Memory Pixel display that I love. Both could use some work on adapting the UI to the little blackberry touchpad. Neither using a mouse cursor nor meta/ctrl modifier combos are very ergonomic on these little handhelds.

[0] https://beepy.sqfmi.com/

[1] https://blog.beeper.com/2023/05/16/beeper-x-sqmfi-beepberry/

That's adorable, but the censored/pixelated keyboard is a little offputting. Am I guessing right that they're using Blackberry overstock and censoring trademarks?

Oh LOL I didn't even notice that on the first link, yeah I guess they're just obscuring it for the logo. IRL it is a non pixelated keyboard xD

FWIW the project hit a wall and they didn't deliver the quantity they planned on, I ended up buying one on ebay for an extortionate cost (but buying rare electronics scratches an itch for me) - digging in the discords lead to discover an offshoot project that made some progress at a recent chaos comms congress, called Beepis

https://bbkb-community.github.io/computers/beepis/

Yeah, it was also rebranded from "Beepberry" to "Beepy" because RIMs lawyers had nothing better to do than rush to the defence of a long-dead brand apparently.

The company is just called Blackberry now. They rebranded sometime around 2013.

I've been playing with the Beepy. So much potential, but the community around it never sprung up, and the developer has moved on.

For me it was a cool little terminal that mostly didn't work outside my usual hotspot. Managing WiFi on a Pi from the terminal is no fun.

Oh, not that CM5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine

Isn't a phone more powerful these days?

Than 1024 SPARC cores? ... actually, looks like phones beat the 130 GFLOPS score mentioned on wikipedia at least 5 years back, so it looks like yeah, even if your problem is widely parallel a modern high end phone will still do better. Woah.

Would ge possible to install a small Clipper LTE 4G Breakout (SP/CE) into this design? For instance, there is this one which seem small enough to fit in the case (if adaptions): https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/clipper-breakout?variant=...

I got the Hackberry Pi Zero from Elecrow recently and it has been excellent for playing around. I really miss real keyboards on mobile devices and it has been fulfilling to use it.

Same. The zero has only 512MB RAM so I started projects to rebuild the original BB OS for this while also adding Xpra to stream a browser running on a remote server (they all require 1GB+). Then priorities hit and I have not been back on this project since.

I always wanted to buy this. Now sold out: https://lilygo.cc/products/t-keyboard

This is the future i wanted in the 90s.

I like it.

Is someone still making these blackberry keyboards, or is there just that much old new stock around?

The Raspberry Pi is in dire need of a DP Alt mode USB C port. Those small portable devices would pair nicely with the current wave of Display/XR glasses but they all need Displayport via USB.

And while you can work around that with an adapter it takes away from the simplicity of just plugging in the glasses ( and most of them get quite hot too).

Do recent SoC integrate necessary muxers? Last I checked few years ago, it needed a special multiplexer chip between display out and USB-C port to handle mode switching, and there were lots of engineering challenges and costs involved, almost like using one set of pipes for both coolant water and lubricant oil.

I don't know what change they would need to make but the OrangePi had it for quite some time and it works well

I love custom handheld computer projects like this.

Few years ago I wanted to build one as a hobby/toy project with parts that are more or less easily available. So I did [0]. Instead of using a pre-made keyboard I used simple push buttons and instead of specialized keyboard controller I used an Atmega328P. Most of the components are through-hole and easy to solder. Anyway, the couple of the handhelds I built are sitting in a drawer at home, but it was fun building it nevertheless.

[0] https://github.com/jovan3/rpi-ibex-hyperpixel

No picture of the finished toy?

Here [0] is one I took a while ago. One of the reasons for building this toy was to have an Emacs device with a physical keyboard to use while commuting.

[0] - https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/111/119/5...

I'd rather have it in tablet format with more screen instead of the blackberry keyboard, now that there are very light cheap bluetooth keyboards that are comfortable to type on. I'm using one right now with my phone, and it weighs about the same as the phone. There are smaller and lighter ones around too.

It's much better for extended typing than a screen keyboard or blackberry keyboard. For non-extended typing, the blackberry keyboard is a small enough improvement on the screen keyboard to not be worth permanently dedicating space to it.

Just make the tablet battery swappable and sign me up :).

I quite like the idea of a physical keyboard on the device but I agree it's not really the best for extended typing.

It does cover the use cases I wan't from a linux hand held up to a point. If I could dock it to have a real monitor when I'm not on the go it would be perfect. Maybe through a usb-c output ? Just so I don't have to fiddle with multiple usb/hdmi cables when I want to set up

Lilygo has a number of devices based on the same keyboard but esp32 MCU.

Some with Lora.

https://lilygo.cc/collections/lora-or-gps

Those devices use the older style BB keyboard, the one with the trackball. The Beepy from SQFMI is another Raspberry Pi platform with the trackpad keyboard.

I think the Beepy can be considered abandoned by now. All the YouTubers got one, but they never came back into stock. There’s a waiting list but I’ve signed up to that list like a year ago and heard nothing so far.

Yes Beepy is abandoned, there is a community fork now called Beepis

https://bbkb-community.github.io/computers/beepis/

Lilygo seems to have no BB keyboards anymore. If you check the product photos on the actual product pages, you’ll notice that they’ve developed their own keyboard and trackball solution.

I suspect they bought and sold them all.

I heard somewhere those spare part Bb keyboards have basically dried up.

Unfortunately an ESP32-based gadget is not really in the same class as a rpi-based device; it won't be able to send/receive email, browse internet, run applications like ping/traceroute/tcpdumpetc (useful as a mobile diagnostic tool), run MAME (seriously, a portable computer that doesn't have games is useless to me) and can't easily be programmed for.

At this point, and at these prices, there are very specific use-cases for esp32-based devices, and they are mostly all single-use devices (i.e. capture then process some video, caching it then transmitting it for remote storage is one use-case I have seen in the wild).

An rpi device is much more general.

Can I add a 4G/5G modem to this? If so, that would be perfect!

I recently came across a WIP full-fledged smartphone based on the CM5, called SPIRIT <https://github.com/V3lectronics/SPIRIT>

They use the EG25 cellular modem <https://www.digikey.pl/en/products/detail/quectel/EG25GGB-25...>, the same one that is used in PinePhone devices

I have both the ble keyboard and the hackberry; they are very nice devices. I use the keyboard for working with xreal glasses on. I type fairly fast now on it. The hackberry is good for tinkering in silence without internet connection; I go sit in the forest and read or, with the hackberry, write small games for fun.

I recently sourced two Q20 keyboards (which wasn't easy) but you need quite tiny connectors to use it. There's a breakout you can build, if anyone is interested: https://oshwlab.com/amarullz/bbq20breakout

It’s $168 plus the cost of a CM5; while it is cool, I would worry that the $200+ device would end up in a drawer…

You could let eBay be your junk drawer.

I suspect an awful lot of us have a mausoleum of abandoned projects where this would feel right at home and is probably downright budget friendly compared to some of the other residents interred there.

I was looking at $400 modded iPod Classics this morning and my better judgement avoided a new member of the "neat projects" drawer.

The drawer that holds my Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and clones thereof is dangerously overpopulated as it is, but I think I've finally learned my lesson: Now I always have a cooling off period of hours after putting something in an online shopping cart before I click "buy" to see if my interest was just a passing one (usually the case).

Mausoleum sounds way more dignified than my junk drawers of half done projects!

If I had a 3D printer I’d build this one for sure. Or the 3D printer would sit in my junk corner. One or the other.

Hey, you gotta send these things off with some dignity - it’s not their fault I’ve got ADHD and poor impulse control.

my Pocket C.H.I.P. wants a friend

neat product but what a garbage company that was

it's cheaper than the flipper zero. Something i have found i mostly don't use apart from keeping a copy of my apartment card.

What do you mean - I will get back to that project some year. It hasn't been touched in 15, but I'm still going to get back to it - sometimes around my 2700th birthday most likely (I'm trusting someone else will advance medicine such that I live that long)

At least this is small. A few years ago I bought a Sun Enterprise 450 for dirt cheap and I've been regretting it ever since.

Yeah... for me, my vision is rather deteriorated, just looking at the size of things in the screenshots I can tell I'd have trouble using it. I can't even use the Steam Deck for that reason. At least my daughter and SO get use out of it.

For about 5 years before Android/IPhone, I used a nokia phone that opened with the screen in the middle of a split querty keyboard on the phone... that thing was perfect for notes/text. I really wouldn't mind something like that or even this device as long as the text could be set to something reasonable for my poor vision to use. I have to max out my accessibility/text settings on android and that's a stretch at times (also exposes so main UI failings).

The CM5 also doesn't have hardware video decoding, making it weird for a handheld device.

I would shove any other cm5 compatible device into this than the actual cm5.

I don't know about other formats, but the CM5 specs sheet says "4K60 HEVC decoder".

Yes, you are correct. It has a 4k60 HEVC decoder, i forgot about that.

It has no h264 encoder or decoder or other encoders or decoders.

I know this from watching lots of people try to use it on 3d printers and discovering that their camera streams now take tons of CPU[1] after "upgrading" from a pi 4b to a cm5.

In any case, from just about any perspective, you are better off shoving a rockchip based cm5 compatible board in this.

[1] the commonly-used logitech cameras used to do h264 streams, but they removed the h264 encoder chips in all of their models a few years back, without changing any of the model numbers. All the current ones are like yuvy420 at 5fps or mjpeg at 30fps. Even for something like the mx brio. But for things like the c920,if they are old enough, they do h264, and if they are new, they don't.

Is it possible to buy a standalone Blackberry USB keyboard? zitaotech store has been out of stock for months.

There is a chip that can control keyboards with I2C interface, the ADP5587, handles all the delicacies of button pressing:

https://www.analog.com/en/products/adp5587.html

Nice. there's also a project [0] that uses the RP2040 to talk I2C and present it as USB HID, created in service of the beepberry [1]. Now that I think of it tho this could be made into a very miniature home theater PC remote, a la the Logitech DiNovo

[0] https://github.com/TheMediocritist/beepy_rp2040

[1] https://blog.beeper.com/2023/05/16/beeper-x-sqmfi-beepberry/

[2] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/546865-REG/Logitech_9...

In the HackberryPi CM5, does that pointing device (which IIUC is repurposed from Blackberry hardware) work like a joystick/TrackPoint?

Can you move smoothly at all angles with it, well enough to use the desktop GUI?

Yes. I tried to find a good video showing it, this one from the same creator shows it being used as a mouse and you can see it works pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=568L-P2tBwc

Thanks for finding that. Nice. Starting at 14s in the video, looks like it's doing both coarse and fine movement. I don't know whether it would have to calibrated for best balance on the tiny display, but looks like it will probably work pretty well.

Something to hack, but I don't see how to easily type braces and parentheses. Looks like a non-starter to me because for me, I hack by writing in languages that require parentheses.

ugly keyboard, and FAT ! very FAT

I need AltGR (similar, chech, french, spanish and many other language!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key

Might be tge pathway to cheap open source cellular service.

I want something the size of a TRS-80 Model 100 - something I can type on.

You may want to look into the clockwork pi's devterm.

I find it a bit small.

It looks nice and makes me missing the Blackberry keyboard now

Fwiw, for other projects you can look at other SoC brands than Raspberry, such as OrangePi, BananaPi, ClockworkPi, KickPi, Pine64, Rock64, Odroid, Libre Computer, Radxa, ArmSom, Onion, Udoo, NVIDIA Jetson, ASUS Tinker, Khadas. I was kinda blown away by how many there are. Ask ChatGPT for specific models and feature comparison.

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