Are you a hacker who occurs to overlook their Blackberry? Seems like there’s a brand new product that’s simply your pace: the “Beepberry.” It actually grafts the keyboard of a Blackberry Basic 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a Raspberry Pi Zero W, all paired with a 400 x 240 “Reminiscence LCD” display that appears prefer it was ripped from an outdated graphing calculator — however is a little more subtle.
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 gadget is ostensibly designed to run Beeper with out another on-line distractions, however Migicovsky is aware of what you’re considering: he additionally describes Beepberry as a transportable “e-paper” pc 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 need to discover a solution 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 Basic Q20 backlit keyboard, you get an USB-C port, a RGB LED, a facet button, an influence change, and Common Goal Enter / Output (GPIO) breakouts.
For $99, you will get a Beepberry equipment that features a Pi Zero W preinstalled. In any other case, you’ll need to carry your individual or one other single-board pc chip just like the Radxa Zero or MQ-Professional — which ought to 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 within the conventional sense. You’ll want to make use of Raspberry Pi’s built-in Wi-Fi, maybe hotspot it to a smartphone while you’re out and about, until you’re prepared to plan a mobile add-on that plugs into its headers.
For those who’re concerned about a Beepberry, you would possibly need to act quick: there’s solely 50 initially obtainable to ship. You’ll must put in your order, after which fill out the Early Entry Program type on the underside of the web page to allow them to know you need it now. The positioning doesn’t point out how lots of the preliminary 50, if any, stay obtainable 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 count on many out-of-box options in the event you get your palms on one. For those who merely need one thing with a whole out-of-box expertise and a black and white display, a Playdate could also be extra your pace. And in the event you’re simply trying to assist the Pebble founder’s subsequent endeavor, you could possibly look ahead to his staff’s upcoming Small Android Cellphone.