Bento: A Steam Deck in a Keyboard

This is a project that had been eating away at me for a bit, sitting in the back of my mind.

It's a computer that fit's perfectly underneath an Apple Magic Keyboard, and has a compartment to store peripherals like a dongle or small mouse. It has no display, instead opting for XR display glasses.

The internals are the main board, cooler, and battery from a Steam Deck OLED. I bought the parts separately rather than gutting a perfectly good one.

The link is to the CAD files. I decided to open source it as I explore building a better one.

Feel free to jump straight to that, here's the origin story for anyone interested:

I started using the XREAL glasses a few months ago. they're great, easily my favorite "XR" product. It's built around the one killer app of XR, a virtual display. shedding all non-essential hardware into a small, lightweight package.

but I hate the redundancy. Whatever device I'm using it with, the built in screen goes unused. In parallel, I've also found myself extremely disappointed in each product calling itself a "spatial computer" despite being nothing but an overweight iPad for your face.

I wanted a real computer designed to be used with these glasses, and in the smallest package I could possibly achieve.

So I grabbed an actual iPad, downloaded Shapr3D and got to work. My iteration process involved jumping back and forth between my iPad and a 3D printer. I went through roughly 15 failed iterations getting the screw mounts, airflow, and ergonomics just right.

The final result is what I believe to be a true spatial computer. I've been daily driving and I'm pretty happy with the experience. It's currently running Ubuntu 24, but I may switch back to Steam OS, given it's better optimized for the hardware.

This project mentions a Framework-based version as a future idea. A similar Framework 13 build popped up in r/framework a few months ago:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/framework/comments/1jo7m8c/framewor...

Updated with a new mainboard from the Ryzen AI line:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/comments/1kjknh4/vrxr_cyb...

GitHub repo with STLs and build details, with it running Linux and Stardust XR with non-spatial inputs on XREAL glasses:

- https://github.com/Pyro57000/fyer_deck

Thank you very much for sharing the files and your experience! I just got my first XR glasses, Xreal One Pro, and had your link bookmarked to do something similar. I am very impressed with these glasses. Looking through ifixit I can't find the Steam Deck's mainboard. Where did you find it?

I see. Need to check Ebay then.

I am interested in a productized version - but only with x64 boards like the Steam Deck or one of the Framework mainboards. I don't want to deal with 3D printing and all that. The latter are larger than the Steam Deck, though. No battery for me though: I would use it after work, when I am near an outlet anyway.

That's really cool. I don't think you should support another keyboard, there may be better ones from a certain POV but I don't think there's a better one that's not significantly thicker and any keyboard options will quickly multiply complexity with any SBC/computing options. You will go down a rabbit hole if you start taking requests here. I think steamdeck internals plus rpi5 plus latest framework internals with no other configs is ambitious but not too ambitious.

My hobby is miniaturizing everything. If I were to fork this project (and I would love to after about 10 other projects are complete), I would think about selecting one good dongle, "shucking" it any other needed things, integrating them, and then finding the minimum volume to fit my preferred travel controller[1] and preferred travel mouse[2]. Then, I would consider customizing the housings of those things to be even slimmer without customizing any electronics except for maybe making sure everything gets charged while stowed. I would also consider minor mods to the keyboard to get rid of the bulk of the usbc cable. Pogo pins plus some 3D printing should do the trick.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55DO1HDeCHQ. No longer available new but this is the only good slim dual analog controller I have found.

[2]Still looking for a good one