Another random concept for a pi-based concept. This one is a lot less ambitious than any possible handheld. The idea is to make a case for the Pi to hold a floppy drive, fan and mSata drive, and then have it look like a work station from the nineties, and then load it up with a customized version of XFCE4.

So why a floppy? Generally because it’s easier to use than a cd (in terms of read – write), and I’m interested in how much data can be packed onto a floppy disk. With source files, it would be interesting to manage them with a floppy (and of course with Git). For the mSata, I’m finding that using an SSD is stupidly faster than using an SD card. I can’t quantify exactly how much better, but everything feels so much snappier to the point where it doesn’t make sense to go back. And lastly a fan, the Raspberry Pi 3B+ get’s stupidly hot. And small fans are noisy, so I want to mount a decent size fan into the case to get air passing over a heat sink.

Approach is going to be start cheap and work my way up. I think I could start with something simple like a clip board, drill holes into it and get stand offs for the parts, and tie cables down, to get a working proof of concept to start. And then from there start figuring out parts I can implement better. I may be able to order custom cut acrylics and work towards a better proof of concept from there.

Edit:

Dropping a picture of the Think Centre desktop to act as a reference.

Quick outline for the “Piboy Pocket”. Originally the idea was to use either a Raspberry Pi zero, or the Raspberry Pi computer module with an e-ink screen to replicate a Gameboy Pocket. Though after finding out how slow the refresh rate on an e-ink device screen is, that doesn’t seem like a viable option, at least for now. And if anything I think the Arduboy fits this niche pretty nicely already. And rather than a Pi the Arduino makes more sense for this task. Not to mention that $50 for a completed product than trying to roll my own (in this case). That being said it looks like the arduboy is out of stock, so it might be worth ordering one if I ever come across one.