The "Vertical Runner" Is a Practical Cyberdeck for Field Use with a Sci-Fi Twist
Raspberry Pi-powered gadget delivers on-the-go Wi-Fi penetration testing capabilities in an unusual form factor.
Maker James Reeves has finished building a fully-functional Raspberry Pi-powered cyberdeck portable with a sci-fi aesthetic and unusual grip: the Vertical Runner.
"This deck you see is the third version that didn't wind up in the trash," Reeves explains of the finished device. "I had initially set out to just create a film prop for a main character of a sci-fi thriller short I was writing, but somewhere along in my research I spiraled down into a rabbit hole of becoming an ethical hacker and cybersecurity, chasing down a HTB-CPTS and earning a CompTIA Linux+ cert before I ever ended up finishing this thing."
Inside the unique housing is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB single-board computer connected to a Waveshare 3.5" IPS touchscreen display above an off-the-shelf compact Bluetooth keyboard. There's also a USB-connected dual-band Wi-Fi dongle — picked to give the gadget the ability to run in monitoring or injection mode and for the ease with which it can have a chunky external antenna added.
"Chunky," in fact, is a good description for the overall aesthetic. The 3D-printed housing of the Vertical Runner features curved edges which do little to de-emphasize the shape of its internal components, then come out to place an angle-adjustable button-actuated one-hand grip into the user's off-hand — modified from a camera rig, the maker explains, and threaded for accessory mounting or a shoulder sling.
"The unit does get warm, there is no cooling," Reeves admits. "The idea is it's a field-ready unit and you'd be hopefully successful with whatever activity in less than ~30 minutes, however I believe the battery while running monitoring/injection would last for ~4 hrs. The intention was the main character was going to truly use it in a cinematic way, at night, in the shadows, opening cars, doing CAN bus hacks, network sniffing… etc. I was trying to make it a practical tool. For all intensive [sic] purposes, it is one."
More information on the project is available in Reeves' Reddit post.