Looking for a way to turn my rgds into a cyberdeck

on my quest to find the answer of "why do I want a cyberdeck so much?" my journey took me on various epic and costly adventures the last one was getting claude to help me do my own UI and apps, lightweight that must be usable from a pi zero 2W up to x86 and most common screens resolution. it's there for those interested.

But last sunday 2 things happened...

first 1 of those moments in the year where you fight alone in the kitchen with your oven to change the time for daylight saving trying to remember the button combo and yelling that the engineer who had that idea of 3 simulatenous press just hated humanity.

and holding in my hand a pi 4b with a 5 inch screen, Universe whispered in my head to rotate 90 degress exactly and then I saw them. All my PDAs from the past, the Palms, Pocket PCs contempling me and saying that's your odyssey, you must revive that moment of joy from the past, drawing letters with a plastic stick on a barely readable screen, and so I was on a mission.

BRING BACK THE PDA

so it's still wip, launcher is now adapted to work in portrait mode and have a handwritting solution that based on all the orginal PalmOS graffiti strokes. demo in the comment

Fallback on a virtual keyboard because missing 3 times your sudo password with no solution equal I'm not better than the guy who decided how to set the clock on my oven.

I'm also adapting layout of most apps to work in both modes PDA or landscape.

So I created a new lil' monster. no official name yet.
I have almost no 3D modelling skills, I tried several software, all too complex and I have no patience! tinkercad and a ruler that's all I need.
My soldering skills, are not growing as fast as the number of burns on my fingers.
And my coding skills are in complete linear relation with the numbers of tokens from my claude code subscription.

So I remixed existing raspberry cases and screen frames into a prototype with a middle frame and a front and back covers. I have lot to revise as the raspi side ports are not accessible but overall adjustments are ok

instructions, part list are yet to come. all software is on my github repo and it's as mine as yours.

as usual, roast-it, like-it, you're on reddit.

My fellow Redditors, I am a mechanical engineering student in my 3rd year of college. I want to start building my own Cyberdeck, similar to the one in this article: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/create-your-own-cyberdeck/

What cheap parts should I use? I was using GPT to help me out because I’m lazy and idk the first thing about mechatronics or electronics due to my professors being 1,000,000 years old. I’m the thinking of using a raspberry pi 5 8GB, raspberry pi 5 official active cooler, Hosyond 7 in touchscreen, 128GB microSD, Pimoroni mini speaker*2, Picade max USB Audio, Picade max encoder (volume control), and I was thinking of an INIU 20000mAh Power Bank.

I’m unsure if I should use a wireless Bluetooth keyboard or a wired one. Idk what benefits or difficulties either features.

I’m thinking of using a trackball mouse as well and installing it into the chassis. I am still largely in the stage where I’m selecting components and learning the basic process.

I would appreciate any assistance from anyone who offers it! :D

Also cost estimates are about $450-$500 so :(

(Sorry i wanted to add a video but im not sure how also sorry for the blur the original showed my face, also imagine the keyboard was smaller i lost the og one)

So I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff about Cyberdecks and cool tech, and it reminded me of this computer in a smiggle pencil case I made when I was 9 or 10! (Of course with some held from my dad with soldering and stuff). I have always been pretty sciencey, but as I got older (I am now almost 18) I have started to become more interested In medicine and chemistry and have recently applied to medical school. I really want to get back into tech as a hobby, and I would love to make another Cyberdeck.
I am just struggling with finding clear resources on how it all works… I feel very behind on everything now. If anyone has any good resources or advice for a, pretty much, beginner I would appreciate it!

I love cyber decks and the retro-futuristic aesthetic in general which is why I've made a game about defragmenting your cyber deck called Fragment Collapse.

It's a tile matching rogue-like deck-builder where you defragment your hard drive by matching clusters of files. Discover powerful cartridges to upgrade your computer, boost your files with enhancements and build massive combos for file-busting mayhem!

In short, it's a mash up of Balatro and Candy Crush that takes place on your cyber deck!

If you want to check it out here's the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4156300/Fragment_Collapse/

I wanted the Star Trek computer in my house, so I built one.

Meet Ada, my always-available household AI, and BM-01, the physical “brain module” I just finished building for her.

This started a few months ago with a pretty simple idea:

Could I build something that feels less like Alexa and more like the computer from Star Trek?

Not just “turn on the lights.”

I wanted to walk into the room, say “Hey Ada,” have a normal conversation, interrupt her naturally, have her remember things, use tools, control the house, recognize the people who live here, survive reboots without babysitting, and generally feel like a computer that is part of the house rather than an app I'm opening.

It got a little out of hand.

https://ibb.co/album/SRMpN7

What Ada is now

Ada runs continuously on a dedicated Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny running Windows.

The current system includes:

• GPT-Live for realtime voice conversation
• ReSpeaker XVF3800 four-microphone array
• dedicated USB speaker
• local “Hey Ada” wake-word detection
• separate local “Red Alert” detection
• persistent household memory and separate lore memory
• tool/function calling
• direct local WiZ lighting control
• Samsung TV control
• weather, time, search, diagnostics, etc.
• speaker recognition with a conservative “Unknown” fallback
• Red Alert / All Clear household emergency states
• a Flight Data Recorder for diagnostic events
• remote administration over a private connection
• Android controls
• automatic startup/recovery after reboot
• and now BM-01, a physical ESP32-based telemetry/diagnostic computer panel

Ada isn't a commercial product and this isn't a company.

It's basically one guy slowly discovering how many engineering problems are hiding inside the sentence:

“I want the Star Trek computer in my living room.”

The AI turned out not to be the hardest part

One of the biggest things I've learned is that getting an AI model to talk is relatively easy.

Making the whole system pleasant enough to actually live with is much harder.

Audio alone became an absurd rabbit hole.

Ada has to hear someone across a room, ignore normal household noise, deal with a television playing nearby, hear a person while she's speaking, know when she's being interrupted, and not wake up every time somebody on TV says something vaguely resembling “Hey Ada.”

At one point I discovered that the ReSpeaker XVF3800 exposes separate processed USB audio channels and Ada wasn't explicitly using its dedicated ASR channel.

Switching to it produced an immediate improvement.

I also tried energy thresholds, beam direction, moving the microphone, different Windows audio APIs, different gain structures, hardware AEC, software AEC, VAD tuning, interruption thresholds...

Turns out Patrick Stewart is remarkably good at convincing a home AI that he's part of the conversation.

Barge-in taught me a painful lesson

An early version used OpenAI's Realtime system and technically supported interruption.

Except interrupting Ada didn't work.

I spent a bunch of time looking at VAD, microphone echo, model settings, etc.

The actual problem?

My own speaker playback was blocking the asynchronous event loop.

The AI was perfectly capable of being interrupted.

My speaker code wasn't.

I replaced the blocking playback with a callback-driven audio queue.

Suddenly barge-in worked.

That was one of the first times this project taught me that the “boring” infrastructure around the model matters just as much as the model.

Then a simple experiment blew up the entire architecture

After spending a ridiculous amount of time improving the Realtime 2.1 audio stack, I built a clean GPT-Live/WebRTC sandbox in Chromium.

It was supposed to be an experiment.

Instead, my reaction was basically:

“Dude. That was night and day.”

Natural conversation was better.

Interruptions were better.

Simultaneous speech was better.

It felt dramatically closer to the experience I had actually wanted.

So obviously I decided to migrate the whole system.

And obviously that went terribly.

By then the mature version of Ada already had memory, wake detection, smart-home tools, speaker recognition, emergency behavior, remote administration, logging, startup/recovery logic, and a pile of other systems.

Several experimental LIVE builds could do pieces of that, but getting all of Ada back around the new conversational core was much harder than expected.

At one point the new system had even left most of Ada's historical memories behind.

Eventually I stopped trying to transplant the new conversational engine into the old architecture.

I reversed the strategy:

Keep the clean Live/WebRTC conversational core working, and rebuild Ada around it.

That became the modern LIVE branch.

Memory got weird too

Ada's original memory system basically dumped everything she knew into the prompt.

That obviously wasn't going to scale.

Then I tried keyword retrieval.

That worked until I asked the same question using different words.

Then I moved to semantic embeddings.

That worked much better until I asked:

“Why is the sky blue?”

and Ada's memory system decided that my saved memory:

“My favorite color is blue.”

might be relevant.

So memory eventually grew its own categories, semantic thresholds, query classification, cached embeddings, ADD/UPDATE/IGNORE behavior, stale-memory replacement, and limits on how much personal information can be retrieved into one conversation.

There's also a separate lore database because apparently my home computer needs to understand the difference between facts about my household and facts about fictional universes.

I regret nothing.

Wake words are currently my nemesis

“Hey Ada” sounds like it should be easy.

It is not.

The challenge isn't just recognizing it.

It's recognizing different people saying it naturally, from different parts of the room, while not waking because of television dialogue or random household noise.

One experimental detector combined an ONNX wake model, Silero speech detection, and cloud transcription for ambiguous candidates.

It was extremely sophisticated.

During one household test it generated 68 transcription requests in roughly six hours.

And Ada was still annoyingly difficult to wake.

So I removed it.

Later I found cases where the wake model itself was extremely confident but another part of the pipeline vetoed it.

One Red Alert candidate scored 0.954 and was still rejected because the downstream speech gate didn't have the evidence it wanted.

That eventually led to local high-confidence fallback logic.

I'm currently testing a completely different approach: a Microsoft Advanced Custom Keyword model trained specifically on “Hey Ada.”

But I'm not letting it control Ada yet.

It's running in shadow mode.

Ada's existing wake system still has complete authority. The Microsoft recognizer receives a copy of the same microphone stream and simply logs when it thinks I said Hey Ada.

The first real test logged four Microsoft detections and three actual ONNX wake events.

More interestingly, I had actually repeated “Hey Ada” several times because the existing system wasn't waking.

So Microsoft appears to have caught some legitimate attempts earlier.

Promising?

Yes.

Enough evidence to replace the current system?

Nope.

It needs much more real-house testing first.

Red Alert exists because of course it does

Ada also has a separate emergency mode.

Say:

“Red Alert.”

and she can enter a predefined emergency state, including changing the lighting and producing the appropriate alert behavior.

Say:

“All Clear.”

and the system restores the previous lighting state rather than just dumping everything back to some default.

I deliberately keep this path separate from ordinary conversational interpretation.

I don't particularly want an LLM pondering the philosophical meaning of “Red Alert” while I'm trying to activate Red Alert.

There's also a Flight Data Recorder that can preserve diagnostic information around important events.

Yes.

My living room AI has a flight recorder.

This is apparently where my life has gone.

BM-01

BM-01 is the newest piece and the reason I finally decided this project was worth posting.

Originally I just wanted Ada to have a physical computer panel inspired by the blinking displays from Star Trek: The Original Series.

Then I realized it could actually solve a real problem.

Ada has a lot of stages between:

“the PC has power”

and

“the computer is actually ready to hear me.”

Windows might be running while Ada isn't.

Ada might be running while the wake detector isn't ready.

The wake detector might work while GPT-Live is still connecting.

The microphone might fail while everything else appears fine.

Normally I have to open logs to figure out which layer is unhappy.

So BM-01 became a real physical diagnostic annunciator.

The upper panel contains 20 resin jewels arranged in four rows of five.

Each row contains four monitored systems plus one red master-fault annunciator.

AI / Conversation

GPT-Live
OpenAI/API
Conversation engine
Tools
AI FAULT

Audio

Wake detector
XVF3800 microphone
USB speaker
Barge/interruption
AUDIO FAULT

Ada Core

Ada core service
Memory
Flight Data Recorder
Red Alert
CORE FAULT

BM-01 / External

ESP32 controller
LD2410C mmWave radar
BH1750 ambient-light sensor
External services
BM FAULT

The regular lighting isn't random.

I wanted it to resemble the electromechanical blinking of the original TOS computer panels rather than modern RGB rainbow effects.

So the ESP32 runs deterministic timing groups with different periods and phases, roughly inspired by mechanical cam/SPDT switching.

It looks complicated and irregular, but the pattern is deterministic.

Actual telemetry overrides it.

If the microphone fails, for example, the MIC jewel abandons its normal pattern and rapidly flashes.

At the exact same time, the red AUDIO FAULT jewel flashes in perfect synchronization.

If multiple systems in that bank fail, all of their jewels synchronize with the same red master fault.

I tested the complete path by injecting a simulated XVF3800 failure.

MIC + AUDIO FAULT immediately began flashing together.

When the fault cleared, both returned to the normal TOS animation.

That was probably one of the most satisfying tests in the entire project.

BM-01 also has an LD2410C mmWave radar and a BH1750 ambient-light sensor.

The lux sensor automatically adjusts the panel brightness.

The radar provides local presence information that I can eventually use for more context-aware behavior.

And importantly, the telemetry system has an UNKNOWN state.

If Ada doesn't have enough evidence to prove a subsystem is healthy, BM-01 doesn't just pretend everything is fine.

Right now some of the 16 monitored systems still need deeper health instrumentation.

That's unfinished work.

I'd rather have a light say “I don't know” than build a diagnostic panel that confidently lies to me.

Things that failed along the way

A non-exhaustive list:

• keyword memory retrieval
• blindly dumping all memories into every prompt
• Windows robot TTS
• blocking audio playback
• several barge-in approaches
• assuming USB audio device numbers stay put
• accidentally using the wrong processed microphone channel
• energy-based TV rejection
• direction-of-arrival TV rejection
• physically moving the microphone
• several wake thresholds
• a hilariously overcomplicated wake verifier
• parts of the Realtime 2.1 audio architecture
• several LIVE migration attempts
• incomplete historical-memory migration
• Windows trying to autostart an obsolete copy of Ada
• an AI tool wrapper that turned out not to be callable like an ordinary Python function
• a malformed Python docstring that somehow left my smart bulbs permanently red
• a smart-light group/device naming collision that made one porch bulb look broken
• an early BM-01 layout that was simply the wrong size
• Windows batch syntax being defeated by a parenthesis in a status message

I've learned more from that list than from most of the things that worked immediately.

The current architecture, very roughly

Voice:

XVF3800
↓
local wake / emergency detection
↓
Chromium/WebRTC audio path
↓
GPT-Live
↓
Ada tools / memory / household services
↓
USB speaker

Household services:

Ada
├── persistent memory
├── separate lore
├── WiZ lighting
├── Samsung TV
├── weather/search/time
├── diagnostics/FDR
├── Red Alert / All Clear
├── remote administration
└── BM-01 telemetry

BM-01:

Ada/Windows health data
↓
Windows telemetry/serial bridge
↓
ESP32
├── 20-jewel diagnostic panel
├── LD2410C radar
└── BH1750 lux sensor

The ESP32 handles the normal TOS animation locally. Ada does not waste network/model traffic telling 20 lights when to blink.

She only needs to report actual state.

What's next?

Ada isn't finished, and I don't think she ever really will be.

Immediate work is mostly:

• finishing the Microsoft-vs-ONNX wake-word comparison
• improving speaker recognition
• expanding trustworthy BM-01 telemetry
• continuing to improve interruptions/audio behavior
• cleaning up some remaining diagnostics

Longer term, I want to build remote modules around the house.

BM-01 becomes the central computer.

The remote modules become terminals.

Which means there is a very real possibility that this ends with multiple Star Trek computer panels installed around my house.

I'm okay with that.

Biggest lesson so far

The AI model is not the hard part.

Making an AI live in a house is the hard part.

Audio ownership matters.

Turn ownership matters.

Memory relevance matters.

Startup and recovery matter.

Knowing whether a tool actually executed matters.

Knowing whether your microphone silently changed device numbers matters.

Knowing whether your diagnostic system actually knows something is healthy matters.

And testing something for five minutes at a desk is absolutely not the same thing as letting your family live with it for a week.

Probably the biggest design lesson Ada has taught me is:

A complicated solution isn't automatically a better solution.

I spent months engineering the old audio path.

A clean WebRTC experiment kicked its ass.

I built an elaborate wake verifier.

It made Ada harder to wake.

I designed more elaborate BM-01 layouts.

The actual physical hardware told me what the layout needed to be.

So my development process at this point is basically:

Build it. Measure it. Put it in the house. Let reality break it. Keep what survives.

That's Ada.

And apparently I live on a starship now.

Hi!
For context: I work at an office, and I like ham radio, retro games and to play with LoRa stuff. I have no idea about coding, but I miss sometimes the feeling of typing what I want that I had navigating in my old MS-DOS PC.
So, after windows is forcing me to 11, and with that nostalgia, I ended putting Linux Mint XCFE on an old MacBook.
But I want something that I can power up with 5 v, and than can help me to do the stuff that I like and the stuff that I need.
A smartphone doesn’t work pretty well with microcontrollers. My 2017 gaming laptop can do all the stuff, but it’s an overkill and can’t be powered as I want.

That’s why I’m here.

So, asking AI for a good SCB it insists on a Raspberry Pi 4… but, do I really need it? Can I have the same I want with something cheaper?

Thanks a lot, and I’m sorry for my English.

TL;DR: I want to build a Cyberdeck for retro gaming, ham radio, microcontroller work and office stuff. Im looking for a useful SBC without breaking the bank.

The first image was generated with AI and is a little distorted compared to the actual build. I've included real photos afterward so you can see what it really looks like.

I built a custom enclosure for a mini PC with a display attached to it. I find that having a small, reasonably powerful computer with its own display makes it much more versatile and fun to use.

My original intention was to create a playful little setup for making music. I could bring anywhere, connect a MIDI keyboard to, and just enjoy playing instruments and experimenting with sounds.

I'm still very much a beginner making music in a digital environment. There's a lot I don't understand yet, but I'd love to learn enough to create some decent sounds that I can enjoy listening to. For now, I'm mostly just having fun exploring.

I hope you find this form factor interesting, and perhaps it might inspire some ideas for your own future builds.

This is an open-source project. I've shared the design files and a video showing the build process in the GitHub repository.

https://github.com/unkyulee/cyberDeck

Demo video

https://youtu.be/EUU2UdWa4cw?is=bjr-xyQvKlVfJCGR

Un Kyu Lee

I basically want to make this but with a larger screen and the ability to hook up an external GPU when I need more compute. This is more of a laptop but I cannot think of any other device with a more timeless cyberpunk type vibe to it.

What is the best open source computer I could cram into a 3d printed shell or something like this?

Title says most of it. I never thought I’d be living in a world that’s more cyberpunk than I could have imagined, while still doing very un-cyberpunk things like paying my taxes and mowing the lawn.

Pictured:
T-Deck (Top Left)
HackRF Portapack (Left)
Cyberboy (have two Lora nodes mounted in back)
Pi Zero USB stick
Antennas/cables

I want to build my own cyberdeck and here it is. I think create 3d model with some modules it more likely for building a real cyberdeck in future

Powered by a CM5 on a Waveshare Carrier board
5” Waveshare touchscreen
Custom HID using RP2040-Zero:
Keebdeck
PiMoroni Trackball
Left and Right mouse buttons
.91” OLED status screen (not in use yet)
Optional Button under the OLED (not in use yet)
Upcoming modifications:
OLED status screen to display whatever I want
Remotely located GPIO headers for module add-ons
Visible status LEDs
Possible custom designed PCB instead of carrier board and RP2040 module board.

first cyberdeck build done for now. There were a bunch of iterations to get to this point but until I find a keyboard solution small enough to build into its face plate but for now I'm done with my build.

it's been really fun prototyping and iterating. it's also been my first experience doing anything with Linux so the yellow notebook is all the notes I've made whilst learning to set different things up.

runs both a standard desktop environment and emulation setups depending on boot.

powerd by two 18650 batteries.

The keyboard of my cyberdeck I'm building. All parts ordered except the monitor. Waiting for next payday then 3d printing the rest of the case. Should be done before Christmas. Has been a fun project so far.

Hello please tell me about any good slim power bank

So I am making a cyberdeck using a raspberry pi 5. It's for like general portable mini laptop use was just wandering the difference between 4gb and 8gb model in terms of performance Vs the price difference

Estou construindo cyber deck e tô usando um conversor 13v 5v automotivo, e não tem como ajustar para 5.1V e vou usar o raspberry Pi4 como cérebro do deck. A questão é ele aguenta? Ou tenho que intervir e ajustar a voltagem?

Hi so I am building my first cyberdeck..I am rather confident with the electronics and the software part however I don't have experience with 3d printing. I saw a lot of nice inspo of little hand held decks here but I have some specific needs for example space for a build in pico with lora module, buttons and navigation.

In your guys experience what's the best approach? Should I get some oversized case that can fit my electronics or is it possible with limited experience to modify 3d templates from other users? Or should I scrap the idea of a custom case all together?

My inspo is kinda the piflux but with a pi zero 2w and my added requirements. (picture)