What is the most useful handheld keyboard you’ve seen or used?
Twiddler 3
Now that’s the kind of thing I’m looking for! How’s the learning curve?
Edit: too bad about the $199 price tag. Way out of my impulse purchase range.
Building a Raspberry Pi 3B+ full keyboard handheld
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Re: Building a Raspberry Pi 3B+ full keyboard handheld
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twiddler 3
Now that’s the kind of thing I’m looking for! How’s the learning curve? Edit: too bad about the $199 price tag. Way out of my impulse purchase range.
I also found https://www.tapwithus.com/ which looks similarly cool.
Re: Building a Raspberry Pi 3B+ full keyboard handheld
#83> Use USB devices like ... full size keyboards,
My Moto G5+ and my Lebnovo 10" tablet work perfectly with a USB on the go adaptor and a full sized Lenovo keyboard with built in hub and a mouse.
Edit: It also works well with memory sticks.
Re: Building a Raspberry Pi 3B+ full keyboard handheld
#84A similar build is arturo182's Handheld Feather Wing, which uses a Blackberry Q10 keyboard [2] Though it doesn't have a processor of its own it can be plugged into Feather compatible boards that do (like @groguard's Giant Board, which runs Linux [3]). Makes quite a nice package! I ended up going the other way and building a (split) 60% keyboard with a screen and a Pi in the middle [1]. It's long enough that you can s…
Another interesting build currently being polished up is SnapOnAir's Blaspberry v2. It's deemed a "communication tool". They've made a modern day pager as well, but the new one is like a linux blackberry that is entirely open source. The developer has been in talks with arturo about working together on it (based on their tweets at least) using that q10 keyboard. It's pretty damn impressive and I've seen doom running…
I'm always a bit sad, that we don't see the compute module used in these kind of projects, especially when size does matter. But I understand it, they seem hard to source and expensive for hobbyists, which kind of defeats much of the open source spirit. Still, the form factor would work great for add-on boards.
Re: Building a Raspberry Pi 3B+ full keyboard handheld
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm I don't understand this. Why pay 600€ for a handheld with a 1.6ghz dual core if I can buy a netbook/13" with better specs for less? What is the use case for this device?
In 2011, it was a pretty good deal. Edit: apparently it was presented in 2014... when, yes, dual core ARM would have already been pretty sub-par.
It's the same story with the predecessor, the Pandora. It took forever to come out, while the preorder price steadily increased. It turned out to be pretty great when it finally arrived, but the specs did not look good anymore at that point.
And it seems to be even worse for the Pyra, especially since gpd has finally understood the need and is now manufacturing similar devices.
I think the concept is good but maybe it would be better to design a solid handheld with a slot in option for a pi or some similar form factor sbc. That way, users could actually upgrade the device and keep it current. The hard part these days seems not be the actual computing, but the quality and usability of the screen, keyboard and game controls.
Re: Building a Raspberry Pi 3B+ full keyboard handheld
#86I'd love to have an eInk one. AFAIK there are eInk displays available for rPi, but they probably need a different set-up.
> AFAIK there are eInk displays available for rPi
There are hundreds in all shapes, sizes, and levels of color support. Quick search of Adafruit, Amazon, Digikey, or similar will turn up a lot of them.
Re: Building a Raspberry Pi 3B+ full keyboard handheld
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twiddler 3
Now that’s the kind of thing I’m looking for! How’s the learning curve? Edit: too bad about the $199 price tag. Way out of my impulse purchase range.
Takes few hours to start, few evenings to be able to type with pleasure.
I use CoolHand layout which is good for Unix command line.