A Pi for Your Pocket
The BlackberryPi merges old and new tech, combining a Raspberry Pi with a Blackberry keyboard, for an easy-to-build handheld Linux machine.
During the 1990s and into the early 2000s, computing technology had advanced to the point that a reasonable amount of processing power could be carried around in one’s pocket. It was a new concept at the time, so a number of devices were released to test the waters and see what might resonate with consumers. There were micro-sized laptops with tiny monochrome LCD displays, all manner of personal digital assistants with handwriting recognition systems, and dozens of more specialized devices as well.
Fast forward to today and that variety has been largely replaced by the smartphone. And, subtle differences aside, these smartphones all have roughly the same form factor and interface, and can be used for the same purposes. Endless options have been replaced by uniformity. You might argue that this is because smartphones do their job so well, and are so versatile, that we do not need dozens of options. Fair enough, but this is still a drab situation that we have gotten ourselves into.
Australian maker Taylor Hay has a love for handheld computers of all sorts, and is concerned not only with utility, but also aesthetics. With a special interest in cyberpunk gadgets in particular, Hay wanted to build a full desktop computer experience into a stylish, science fiction-inspired handheld. And to be a legit hacking machine, it naturally needed to run Linux as the operating system.
One area where this handheld differs from the devices of yesteryear is the relative ease with which it can be assembled. It did not take a huge engineering effort, custom chip designs, or a manufacturing facility. Rather, Hay’s device, called the BlackberryPi Handheld, was composed of a few commercial, off-the-shelf products that were fit into a 3D-printed case.
At the core of the BlackberryPi Handheld is a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB single board computer, although other models would work quite well too. This was paired with a Pimoroni HyperPixel 4.0 Square high-resolution touchscreen 4-inch display. To make the interface more appealing than typing on a screen, the much-loved Blackberry Q10 keyboard and trackpad from a Blackberry 9900 was included in the build. Everything was powered by a 10,000 mAh LiPo battery scavenged from a cheap power bank, and a seven-segment LED display shows the battery’s charge level.
To keep things neat, the USB connection for the keyboard was soldered directly to pads on the Raspberry Pi, then Kali Linux was installed on the system’s SD card storage. Finally, a 3D model was created for the case, then produced with a 3D printer. In order to fit all of the components inside, it is a bit on the large side, but it looks great — and refreshingly different! — all the same. Hay also notes that the keyboard and mouse are surprisingly nice to work with, so it would seem that the BlackberryPi Handheld would also be very useful, especially for some hardware hacking on the go.
It is not a challenging build, and Hay has already done most of the homework for you, so if you are in the market for a new handheld computer, take a look at the project write-up and consider making your own BlackberryPi Handheld computer.