Bumble Berry Pi – A Cheap DIY Raspberry Pi Handheld Cyberdeck
github.com164 points by MakerSam 21 hours ago
164 points by MakerSam 21 hours ago
> I wanted something small enough to fit into a pants pocket
I always wanted to know what kind of pants people wear who say that to this device size (see also Nintendo DS & co)
Generally, these sorts of devices struggle to fit in normal trouser pockets, especially women's pockets, but I'm happy that I managed to find women's jeans that actually have reasonable sized pockets, at least big enough to fit my pixel 7a in the front pocket. Still might be a bit small for this though. My hoodie pockets would probably hold it just fine though.
As a man who wears jeans with a bit of stretch to them, I can easily (but not comfortably) fit a large can of beer in each of the four pockets. A small device is no problem compared to that.
As a man who lives in sweatpants, I could probably fit two cans in the pockets of my current pants, if I try really hard.
vintage army cargo pants on right now, baggy af and ready for any 'portable' device I throw at them
I printed the casing just to see - it actually does fit in my levi pockets (front and back), but looks and feels a bit ridiculous to actually walk around with
I wear size 36 Levi's and this one fits in my back pocket
That’s a risky place to put it, if you forget it’s there and sit down heh
That is the advantage of the size! There is little chance you will forget that you have the device in your pocket =P
My DS XL definitely fits in my pants pockets. They're pretty loose fitting pants but not overly so.
IDK about pants pockets, but blazer- and sport-coat-wearing needs to make a comeback. Those hip pockets that can comfortably hold all the old pulp "pocket size" paperbacks from back in the day are so damn nice. Great for enormous modern smartphones, too.
I miss the old Travelsmith shirts which had pockets sufficiently large to comfortably hold a Sony PRS-505/600 ebook reader. Since then, I did get a pair of shirts which have similarly large pockets which will accept my Kindle Paperwhite and/or Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, but really wish I'd bought more of them, and am kind of stumped for replacing them when they wear out.
It looks similar to this project: https://github.com/ZitaoTech/HackberryPiCM5
I picked one up a few months ago and I like it.
Nice. Did you build your Hackberry or buy it?
The Hackberry looks awesome. I was going to build/buy one, but I wanted a slightly bigger screen and keyboard, and I also wanted to save some money by using an old 3b+ I had laying around. And I wanted to be able to build it quickly from off-the-shelf Amazon components. So all-in I think I spent ~$70 on this one, whereas the hackberry pi would have cost about double that, and then I would have had to buy the CM5 module.
Curious to hear of your experience with the hackberry - I still might consider getting one of those myself.
Yes, the Bumble Berry Pi is a lot cheaper than the Hackberry Pi, but the Hackberry Pi (with a CM5) performs much better.
I don't have a 3D printer, so I bought the kit from Elecrow. I had to buy my own CM5, a 2TB NVMEe SSD, and a suitably sized WiFi antenna (that would fit into the case without modification). I also picked up a $60 portable (1k) HDMI monitor because the 720x720 screen is difficult to use for apps like Firefox and Thunderbird. I use an Apple wireless keyboard and an Acer wireless mouse (both Bluetooth). The keyboard & monitor fit nicely into a plastic A4 document jacket. I was surprised that the Hackberry's USB-A ports provide enough juice to power the monitor. The Hackberry Pi has got a big battery. The one Hackberry Pi design choice that I don't like is the lack of an RJ45 Ethernet port. They could have left off the I2C port and squeezed a PHY in there somehow. (The CM5 has an Ethernet controller.) I've noticed that if I use a USB-A Ethernet dongle, it sometimes hangs under heavy traffic. I've tried dongles with different chipsets and they all seem to have the same issue. The WiFi speeds (as long as you have a good antenna) are great, and are usually faster than a USB Ethernet dongle anyway.
The thing is ideal for travel. It can fit into any hotel room safe, or go with you.
Very cool - amazing that you can fit something that small in your pocket and it can also power a full size monitor & keyboard. It sounds like the Hackberry Pi is a great fit for your use case. I hadn’t considered using the Bumble Berry like that, but now that you mention it, I might try it out like that next time I travel.
It would be nice to have the beefier Pi 5 on Bumble Berry for the rare times that I need a GUI. I mostly use terminal on this device so it’s usually not a problem, but when I do have to use the full GUI I find the 3b+ annoyingly slow.
I briefly tested the Bumble Berry battery with a Pi 500 and although I got an error message saying that the power supply is not capable of supplying 5A, it seemed to run just fine. The battery is rated to 3A, and streaming full screen video on a 4K screen seemed to draw only about 1A (measured by a usb-c pass-thru dongle). However, I did not push the Pi 5 to its limits and I haven’t used it for an extended amount of time so I can’t confidently say how well it would work.
If you’re willing to pay the extra cash and want a smaller form factor it sounds like Hackberry is definitely the way to go.
Curious what bigger screen and keyboard you found. I was looking for similar stuff and struggled to find larger square displays. The closest I could find was spare blackberry passports screens, but you'd have to reverse engineer the screen connector.
Very very cool.
Once upon a time I wrote a small script to turn a raspberry pi into a midi device. I really want to be able to make my own custom midi controller, but it's not exactly fun.
is Raspberry Pi OS entirely usable without a trackpad/mouse or does this need an external one to be connected?
The Bumble Berry has a touchscreen, so if you need to use the Raspberry PI OS GUI, you can simple use your finger as a mouse pointer. I've found it works pretty well for the rare occasions that I need to start the GUI.
However, I mostly use this unit in terminal, which means I boot to terminal and only occasionally start up the GUI with startx when I need it.
I use terminal because: I'm trying to brush up on my terminal skills and most of my use-cases are covered in terminal with applications. Some of my favorite terminal applications are:
tmux - for managing multiple terminal windows nano - for writing code (occasionally I use vim) tty-clock - nice clock screen saver lynx - text based web browser. works surprisingly well on some sites like wikipedia epy - ebook reader - great for reading classic free ebooks from Project Gutenberg doom - because doom cmatrix - matrix-style screensaver - looks really cool
My main use case is for learning new code languages - it's nice to have a handheld device on me to practice writing code when I have a few minutes on me but don't have a laptop
Anyone has a RS36 Max?
thats really cool! i will consider making it myself
i'd like to try making this but i don't have a 3d printer nor know someone who does. i have a feeling that if i find a service that does it, that it would cost as much for the 3d printing as for the raspberry pi itself
I've not tried it myself, but I know that JLC does a 3d printing service in some funky materials that I definitely can't print at home, and it might be a bit pricey but from what I've seen online, the quality is pretty good. You could get the case printed in TC4 titanium if you really wanted
I don't know if you're based in the US, but here in Europe I used Xometry and, while expensive for what you're getting, it was pretty reasonable.
I built a cyberdeck bigger than this and the case came out to be around 30 euros.
You probably know someone, or know someone who knows someone, if you don't have a library or makerspace that can print it for you. Shortly after I got my latest printer someone on our local "Free Stuff" exchange Facebook group, a message asked if someone could 3D print the parts for a circular knitting machine. I took up that call and spent 2 weeks printing 100-some parts, and I just asked them to cover the filament, so around $70 (4 roles of PETG). Think about asking on reddit/facebook/nextdoor.
A quick look at a 3D printing service shows $20 for the upper part of the case. Not too bad. But also consider looking for a 3D printer at a local library or makerspace
i'm pretty rural, nothing local.. but have been looking at online services and comparing.. see how it goes :-)