Zitao's Compact Handheld HackberryPi Family Boasts Twin Batteries and Upcycled BlackBerry Keyboards

Mononymous maker Zitao has put together a pair of Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W-powered handheld computer designs, one featuring the BlackBerry Q10 keyboard and the other a BlackBerry Q20 keyboard: the HackberryPi family.

"A handheld Linux terminal using [the] Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W as the core, with a 4" 720×720 TFT display," Zitao writes of the HackberryPi's current incarnations. "The main reason why I design and build this handheld cyberdeck is to treat this as a learning tool and also a funny toy for the hackers. The HackBerry Pi [features] two swappable batteries, so we can just swap the battery in a few seconds if the battery voltage is low and we just don't need to worry about the battery life any more."

Those two hot-swappable batteries are classic Nokia BL-5C rechargeable lithium-ion packs, and they're not the only phone parts to have found their way into the builds: the two current models of HackberryPi feature repurposed keyboards from BlackBerry Q10 and Q20 smartphones respectively, with a variant using the keyboard from BlackBerry's Porsche Design P9983 to follow in the next few days, Zitao promises.

The keyboard, whichever is chosen, sits behind a square-footprint full-color 4" 720×720 TFT panel, without touch — the HackberryPi relying instead on the touch-sensitive trackpad built into the BlackBerry keyboard. Everything is connected to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer fitted in the upper rear of the case — with the twin batteries delivering around 3.5 hours of active use per charge, rising to five if you work at the command-line rather than a graphical desktop.

The compact design includes expansion capabilities, including three USB 2.0 ports courtesy of an internal hub and a STEMMA-style I2C port for interfacing with external hardware. The microSD Card slot is easily accessible, and a hardware switch allows the keyboard to act as a USB device for another computer — including the ability to customize the layout through the VIAL app.

Zitao has published schematics, printable STL files, and more on GitHub under an unspecified license; both the Q10 and Q20 variants have been listed on Tindie at $125.88 and $126.88 respectively, though at the time of writing were showing as out of stock.