u/bimbotech

building a lego castle case for raspberry pi 5 and about 70% of the way there just waiting on more pieces to arrive. it has openings for ports, and interior is designed to hold pi in place without rattling around.

the case opens from the large port wall it’s supposed to open like a flag on a pole situation but I think I need to replace some regular bricks for round bricks to
make the open and close swivel “mechanism” work smoothly.

I am so excited to build these but not sure what I’m doing for the boards yet. Ideally I want something w 16GB ram. I’m considering an Orange Pi 5 16GB bc they are cheaper than the raspberry pi 5 16GB and more powerful. orange pi 5 isn’t gonna be compatible w raspberry pi imager so I’m just gonna raw dog a Linux system onto it if I go that route I know they are Ubuntu and Arch compatible - my fav Linux distribution Garuda is Arch based so I’m probably gonna try to put that on the orange pi. any and all suggestions and questions welcome!

not 3D printed, no soldering involved. no gui, no desktop environment, no x11, no wayland. just a $30 purse a $20 board and sheer stubbornness.

hardware
-raspberry pi 3a+
-waveshare 3.5" capacitive touch display (dsi ribbon cables instead of bulky hdmi cords)
-zitaotech bb-q10 keyboard w trackpad (blackberry keyboard replica w bluetooth powered by rechargeable battery)
-attom 3000mAh mini power bank (shucked but preserved the circuit board, input/output ports, power button)

software
-rpi lite trixie 32 base w a pure tui custom os on top
-evdev, uinput, goodix, systemd to handle touchscreen, trackpad and keyboard inputs
-networkmanager, bluetoothctl, tailscale for wifi, bluetooth, mesh vpn all with auto reconnect watchdog
-fbterm, direct framebuffer, curses, tmux, sse for tui apps accessible via corresponding F keys
-F1 full bash terminal
-F2 chat portal to local ai models
-F3 mermaid tamagotchi with full life cycle
-F4 pdf to plain text e-reader + markdown text editor that uses rsync to source content from cloud/vault
-F5 basic server monitor dashboard
-F6 wifi + vpn
-F7 bluetooth
-zmk for keyboard layout customization (added F keys layer)

architecture
-python shell daemon orchestrates app routing
-shared libs for colors, touch input handling, ssh keys
-for persistence and memory corruption prevention, root is overlayfs while real state is stored on FAT32 boot partition which gets automatically restored every boot. important settings like ssh, bluetooth, wifi , mesh vpn connections all persist across power failures and reboots.

if anyone's interested I created a git repo with instructions on how to customize the tamagotchi to whatever character you want.

first post ever!

I built a rpi 3a+ cyberdeck out of a shell purse

hardware
- rpi 3A+ (512mb ram)
- waveshare 3.5" dsi capacitive touchscreen 640×480
- zitaotech bb-q10 bluetooth keyboard + optical trackpad
- 128GB micro sd card
- attom 3000mAh shucked power bank- neodymium magnets, satin fabric, corrugated plastic board, double stick tape and super glue (used doublestick body tape and nail glue but you get the point)

software
-no gui, no desktop environment, no x11. just a custom layer built on top of rpi trixie lite 32
-tui only os using curses, fbterm directly on framebuffer
-tui app suite triggered by F keys: full bash terminal, local ai assistant, pdf to plain text e-reader, markdown text editor, wifi and bluetooth managers and a mermaid tamagotchi
-tailscale mesh vpn
-touchscreen, keyboard and trackpad handling with evdev, uinput, evdev, systemd service
-auto reconnect watchdog for bluetooth keyboard and wifi
-overlayfs-protected root, fat32 persistent store to circumvent flash memory corruption from power dying

Full build story + timelapse: bimbotech.co/my-cyberdeck-build
Parts list + how-to guide: bimbotech.co/cyberdeck