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Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

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Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#101

Post by rcarmo »

axelthegerman wrote: post #98
johnklos wrote: post #66

I'd love one of these! I just built a portable enclosure with a charge controller, USB hub, ethernet and four 18650 batteries. While The Hackberry Pi Zero would've been a lot easier (assuming I'd've just bought one instead of making it myself), the only downside is the battery life. My application is for having a server that travels with me and is on 100% of the time, sometimes running on battery for hours at a time.…

> My application is for having a server that travels with me You probably have your reasons but I wonder why anyone would need that

I have one, and it’s very, very useful: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/10/07/1830

Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#102

Post by vladxyz »

IgorPartola wrote: post #39
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #35

Oh great! Another awesome looking cyberdeck that I want to own and will find absolutely no practical use for. I've added myself to the waitlist already.

See I do have a use for this kind of thing, but not exactly. I have a few desktop towers and Raspberry Pi devices that sometimes due to upgrades or random acts of Zeus absolutely fail to boot up. I want some ability to connect a keyboard and a screen to these so I can see the actual boot screen. Normally for me this involves lugging the device to my office and connecting it to my office monitor and keyboard which is…

take a look at the gpd pocket 3, with kvm module. sounds exactly like what you're looking for

Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#103

Post by wanderingjew »

tedunangst wrote: post #87
johnklos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this part: > Replace your battery in 10 seconds without killing the power! as a suggestion that you'd have four batteries total, and you'd have two that're fully charged, and you'd replace one battery, and within seconds you'd replace the other. Or at least that's how I'd do it. I've recently read up about power management and battery charging, and want to make a charge controller than can connect two separate…

It should definitely use the plural, batteries, if that's the intention.

acktually, traditionally, 'batteries' referred to two or more cells. This keeps with the etymology of the word as an emplacement of cannon or guns. If OP meant a single cell, they should have written 'cell', not the singular 'battery'.

Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#104

Post by erohead »

mafuyu wrote: post #60

My pet peeve with RasPi for these types of handheld projects is that they don't support suspend, and don't have a true poweroff state. Even in poweroff, they sit there consuming a bunch of current. Beepy is a similar project that uses a RasPi Zero, and their approach is to cut power to the RasPi entirely with a management MCU. On my Beepy, I switched to a Radxa Zero instead and ported over any relevant kernel modules…

I'd love to learn more! I'm one of the Beepy creators...I just emailed you

Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#105

Post by freedomben »

teraflop wrote: post #46

This looks like a pretty cool device! However, I was immediately curious about how the "dual battery" feature works. The IP5306 power-management IC seems to be designed only for a single battery, and as far as I can tell from the schematic[1], the two battery connectors are just directly connected to each other in parallel (across VBAT and GND). This seems really sketchy. If you plug in two batteries that are not at…

I agree, this is a pretty bad idea. I've used batteries in parallel many times, but it's always in the context of treating it as a single "bank" that is always charged at the same level, not as individual batteries which can be swapped separately. Swapping a full battery in when the other one is low is going to result in a rapid rebalance of power until they get to the same level!

You can think of it like having two big swimming pools side by side, slowly draining out into a little stream. If the two pools are at the same level and the wall between them disappeared, they're largely going to be fine and keep on going.

Now imagine one pool is nearly empty and the other is full. As soon as you disappear that wall in the middle, there's gonna be a very powerful wave as the water from the high pool rushes in to fill the empty pool.

Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#107

Post by numpad0 »

fecal_henge wrote: post #70
teraflop wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no problem if you use one battery, and there should also be no problem if you use two batteries and charge/discharge them both simultaneously (because then the voltages are matched). The problem shows up when you try to "hot-swap" just one of the batteries and replace it with one at a different state of charge, as the README claims you can do.

What is the expectation here about functionality? They are using some kind of COTS battery system to keep the cost down, but at the consequence of this safety qustion. Should these people expect any buyer to antipate this? Its not really a consumer product after all. I think there is no shortage of battery management ICs, but the number that can arbitrate between external power/battery A/Battery B certainly eliminate…

It feels to me that the fact that there are no readily available BMS chip that supports this type of circuit indicates something. But maybe I'm mistaken...

Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#108

Post by swores »

walterbell wrote: post #95
swores wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep thanks, I'm indeed hoping to take advantage of that! But I have a sneaking suspicion it won't be a big enough quantity to satisfy even the people who've seen this HN submission so may well come down to what time of day / how quickly I see the email

Both models say "Sold out since Aug 02". If all the existing stock was bought by HN readers today, then 1-2 weeks isn't bad for the next batch, and today's waitlist can influence batch size. There seem to be lots of BB keyboards on Amazon, so hopefully the constraint is funding and manufacturing, not components. Lots of demand from HN can only help with funding!

I saw this thread almost immediately after it was posted and both versions were already out of stock when I got to those pages minutes later, so my assumption was that there either were very few devices (just a couple of PoCs) or that sales had come from somewhere other than HN, either way leaving the majority of people who want to buy it from seeing this thread on the waiting list with me.

Though maybe I'm wrong about how popular it will be, and actually only the handful of people who've explicitly commented about wanting to buy it, like me, will have joined the waiting list and some may then decide not to buy it having slept on it - but it's definitely possible that lots of people are looking forward to getting one or more!)

I also assumed that it was a fairly DYI project done by a single founder (DYI as in him making them himself one by one, rather than having either a team or an outsourced factory ready to scale up to meet whatever demand is on the waiting list), but again I may be guessing wrong (or may have forgotten something they wrote that shows I'm wrong), but it's a few hours past my bedtime so I'll just hope that when I wake up they might have replied to my message asking if I could reserve one rather than spend more time guessing about their production capacity :D )

Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#109

Post by nextos »

heavyset_go wrote: post #94

Back in the day, the Nokia N770/N810/N900 line fit the bill for this perfectly. Its form factor was perfect for the "Linux terminal in your pocket" use case. Might be something to look into for design inspiration.

I miss them so much. Even the N9, which lacked a physical keyboard, was so nice. A planned N9 variant with a sliding keyboard was never released once the series was discontinued.

It was so refreshing to have a mobile that acted as a regular Linux machine. You could copy files from your other computers normally just using scp.

Or tweak the GSM radio, as you would do with any other device, just using ifconfig.

Re: Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

#110

Post by samstave »

johnklos wrote: post #67
teraflop wrote: post #46

This looks like a pretty cool device! However, I was immediately curious about how the "dual battery" feature works. The IP5306 power-management IC seems to be designed only for a single battery, and as far as I can tell from the schematic[1], the two battery connectors are just directly connected to each other in parallel (across VBAT and GND). This seems really sketchy. If you plug in two batteries that are not at…

I read this part: > Replace your battery in 10 seconds without killing the power! as a suggestion that you'd have four batteries total, and you'd have two that're fully charged, and you'd replace one battery, and within seconds you'd replace the other. Or at least that's how I'd do it. I've recently read up about power management and battery charging, and want to make a charge controller than can connect two separate…

A mid-stream capacitor is holding enough charge for 10 seconds to allow indivdual swapping out -- and also this is meant? to mean that you can swap TWO NEW batteries in without having to shutdown/sleep/power interrupt - thus the 10 seconds.... that dope
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