Are you a hacker who occurs to overlook their Blackberry? Seems to be like there’s a new product that’s simply your velocity: the “Beepberry.” It actually grafts the keyboard of a Blackberry Traditional onto a pocketable customized board designed to suit a Raspberry Pi Zero W, all paired with a 400 x 240 “Reminiscence LCD” display that appears prefer it was ripped from an {old} graphing calculator — however is a little more refined.
Beepberry is designed by Eric Migicovsky, founding father of the gone-but-not-forgotten Pebble smartwatch and extra relevantly co-founder of Beeper: the hacky all-in-one messenging app that stuffs each service from WhatsApp to iMessage (utilizing a jailbroken iPhone) into one place.
The machine is ostensibly designed to run Beeper with out every other on-line distractions, however Migicovsky is aware of what you’re pondering: he additionally describes Beepberry as a transportable “e-paper” laptop for hackers.
In case you’re questioning about that “e-paper” display, it’s not technically e-ink — however it’s an LCD made by Sharp with a one-bit reminiscence circuit embedded in every pixel for e-ink-like picture retention.
For $79 you get the Beepberry, mounting screws, and a 2,000mAh battery — though you’ll should discover a option to maintain the battery in place. (In some demos, the creators are actually utilizing a rubber-band.) Along with the two.7-inch display and Blackberry Traditional Q20 backlit keyboard, you get an USB-C port, a RGB LED, a facet button, an influence swap, and Normal Function Enter / Output (GPIO) breakouts.
For $99, you can get a Beepberry kit that features a Pi Zero W preinstalled. In any other case, you’ll should carry your individual or one other single-board laptop chip just like the Radxa Zero or MQ-Professional — which must be drag-and-drop because the Beepberry has a solder-less header.
Notably, the Beepberry itself lacks any {hardware} for mobile knowledge connectivity, so it’s not fairly a self-contained beeper in the traditional sense. You’ll want to make use of Raspberry Pi’s built-in Wi-Fi, maybe hotspot it to a smartphone whenever you’re out and about, until you’re prepared to plot a mobile add-on that plugs into its headers.
In the event you’re keen on a Beepberry, you may need to act quick: there’s solely 50 initially out there to ship. You’ll have to put in your order, after which fill out the Early Access Program form on the underside of the web page to allow them to know you need it now. The location doesn’t point out how lots of the preliminary 50, if any, stay out there for buy.
It’s vital to notice that the software program / firmware remains to be actively being developed and nothing is ultimate, so don’t anticipate many out-of-box options for those who get your palms on one. In the event you merely need one thing with a whole out-of-box expertise and a black and white display, a Playdate could also be extra your velocity. And for those who’re simply trying to help the Pebble founder’s subsequent endeavor, you possibly can look ahead to his crew’s upcoming Small Android Phone.