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kragen
i almost didn't open this because it said 'e-paper' and i've sort of dismissed e-paper for this kind of thing
this is much more interesting than an e-paper device; it's a memory-in-pixel lcd device, which means 100 times better refresh rate and 1000 times better power consumption than e-paper. the lcd in question (ls027b7dh01, i assume, though that information is missing from the web pages) is supposed to run on 175μW at 20fps, so you can get a full usable computer system in submilliwatt territory, so the 2.2 kilojoules in a cr2032 can power it for weeks
however, i think that, as a low-power device, this is probably fatally flawed. the rp2040 dooms it; the rp2040 lacks a reasonable deep-sleep mode; its lowest-power mode is nearly a milliwatt, so it will drain the battery flat when it's not being used
also it's unclear, in this design, how much the rp2040 can do without powering up the pi zero, which is a humongous power hog, using over 1000 milliwatts. so instead of weeks of active use from a cr2032 (and months of standby if you use a low-power micro instead of an rp2040) you get hours
what's the point of using a super expensive memory-in-pixel lcd to get the display power consumption down from e-paper's 10-100 milliwatts into submilliwatt territory if you're just going to burn a thousand milliwatts in a raspberry pi? just use a conventional lcd then, maybe one with nice 24-bit color. old nokia lcds will run on a milliwatt
maybe an esp32 would be a better middle ground if you aren't willing to go all the way to an ambiq apollo3 or something, which can (hypothetically) give you submilliwatt power consumption with workstation-class performance, as long as you don't need virtual memory; you probably want an esp32 or equivalent in there anyway for wi-fi
usb-c is a great way to be able to hook up a full-size external keyboard, but speaking usb-c to a keyboard is also probably beyond the capabilities of the rp2040, and so would also need to power up the giant power hog pi zero
erohead
First off - this thing was designed to be a fun hacker toy, not a real product. Buyer beware!
Plan for power management is pretty simple - trim as much fat from OS startup sequence as possible to get boot-times down to ~5s, eg https://github.com/IronOxidizer/instant-pi. Then turn the Pi off as much as possible. Write to screen, turn off Pi. Set timers on rp2040 to turn Pi on periodically.
With the 2000mAh battery, if the plan works, it should run for a while.
kragen
does that mean that every time you hit a key (after the idle timeout) you have to wait 5 seconds for the pi to boot, wasting 5 more precious joules (a minute of active usage battery life at 100mW)
or does the pi zero have a submilliwatt suspend to ram and i'm just the last to know
i think that it could be a fun hacker toy if you put a low-power microcontroller on it with access to the screen and keyboard and control over the pi's power rails (and the rp2040's if you put that in too)
as a bonus if the low-power micro was an esp32 you would have wifi and bluetooth
then you only need to fire up the pi when its computational gronk is really needed, and the ui stays responsive the whole time
2 amp hours (why would you say 'two thousand milliamp hours', that's four extra syllables for no reason) is 27 kilojoules at 3.7 volts; that's ten months at one milliwatt, a weekend at an esp32-like 100 milliwatts, 7 hours at an optimistic one watt, or three hours at 2.5 watts, which i think is more realistic for the pi
you won't even be able to use this thing all night with the pi running; you'll need an external battery to recharge it before the sun comes back up, like that old laptop that you used to take out of the house back when its battery lasted more than two hours
also 2 amp hours is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 grams of battery, while the rest of the device is i think around 15 grams. admittedly still pretty small and light compared to the fragile monsters that pass for android cellphones nowadays
erohead
> does that mean that every time you hit a key (after the idle timeout) you have to wait 5 seconds for the pi to boot, wasting 5 more precious joules (a minute of active usage battery life at 100mW)
Yes, that's exactly the plan. Pi zero does not have suspend to ram unfortunately, hence this elaborate work around. Remember, the use case is a weekend chat device. This power management scheme fits the use case perfectly.
msephton
You've just described a Playdate. It's a game console not a computer but it pretty much is designed how you've suggested. It also uses the same Sharp Memory LCD.
OOPMan
I'll have you know my fragile monster of a razer phone 2 has survived being dropped more often than I can count XD
paulcole
Bro, if you’re taking real money it’s a real product.
Put that caveat somewhere obvious on the site. “I’m not taking this seriously but I will seriously take your money! Caveat emptor!”
BizarreByte
The website shows it with a battery being held on with a rubber band. If you're buying this you should know what you're getting from just a quick look.
xupybd
It's a kitset, not a finished end user product.
deepspace
Spot on. I was so excited to see the form factor, and then my excitement was deflated as soon as I noticed the component details.
Note to any hardware hackers out there: I would buy the crap out of a unit in this form factor with an ESP32, LiPo charging, and proper deep-sleep oriented circuit design (I have seen too many circuits with cheap voltage regulators leaking many tens of μA).
sqfmi
You may be interested in our other product Franky then :)
garfieldnate
That page just has some pictures. Is there a GH repo for the design, or some other kind of documentation? I would love to learn how this is built.
kragen
this is more promising but you forgot the keyboard
can you plug in an external keyboard
or are you supposed to program it via whisper.cpp speech recognition
tired_star_nrg
Doesn’t look like it’s available to purchase though :(
b1ue64
I can see the beepberry page but this gives a generic database error.
kragen
javascript developers be like, tens of microamps? i've forgotten how to count that low. i don't even get out of bed for less than two peer amps
but i just want to wake up for five milliseconds
girvo
And the ESP32 (Xtensa ones anyway) have pretty meh deep sleep as well. It’s the entire reason we have it power gated and use an STM32G0 (and now an L4) on our board at work :(
kragen
how low power have you been able to get the esp32 to sleep, if you don't mind sharing? and the stm32g? i'm sure the l4 is fantastic
wrt xtensa, in theory risc-v ought to help them with lowering the power suck (it sure helped the gd32v) but i'm not sure it makes a difference in sleep
and of course for milliamps per mips, going to subthreshold switching like ambiq will make a much bigger difference than anything architectural
myself248
Aye, the "diagram" shows nothing of the topology. Can the rp2040 run the show with the Zero not even attached? That would be interesting.
Furthermore, there's no radio other than what's on the Zero? That whacks it right into useless territory for me. What's the point of a low-power device if all it has is high-power communication?
My first/only care for this would be a LoRa backpack. Or even some Nordic thing, or BLE, I don't really care, just anything's better than wifi.
kragen
well, i think an autonomous computer can be pretty useful. i mean, i used computers for 12 years before i got internet access; the closest i got to networking was dialing up bbses
maybe if you had a speaker you could do ultrasonic communication with ble-like range; there are several megahertz of spectrum there that can propagate through air for a few meters, and milliwatts might be adequate. similarly with infrared; historically it's suffered a lot from highly directional interfaces that assume stupid, fragile encoding schemes, but we have enough compute now to do better
but yeah a low-power radio would open up a world of possibilities
csdvrx
> the rp2040 dooms it; the rp2040 lacks a reasonable deep-sleep mode; its lowest-power mode is nearly a milliwatt, so it will drain the battery flat when it's not being used
Low tech immediate solution: add a power switch cutting off the battery.
Bad for the RTC, but it's nothing that NTP or even rdate can't fix (or just don't use the switch if you need the RTC)
Better solution: replace the rp2040 in the next revision.
kragen
that's not a solution, for three reasons
the screen will fade after 30 seconds (unlike epaper)
once or twice an hour you'll forget to turn off the switch when you stop to think and the battery will drain anyway
and you'll corrupt the flash
csdvrx
> the screen will fade after 30 seconds (unlike epaper)
So what? I see that as a positive!
> you'll forget to turn off the switch
Uh, if I don't see the screen fading in 30 seconds, I'll conclude I forgot.
> once or twice an hour
I intend to only turn on the device when I need it.
> and you'll corrupt the flash
I don't think so, I use industrial SDs + journaling filesystems, and I do `sync` before turning off my devices.
dheera
I'm not too sure of this trend of rebranding 1980's monochrome LCDs as the "new" e-paper.
The refresh rates are nice but it's really not the same, and in direct sunlight on a hot California day you can see a world of difference between the contrast and glare of a high school graphing calculator and a Kindle.
kragen
these aren't 1980s lcds, they have an order of magnitude better contrast (slightly better contrast than a swindle), reportedly an order of magnitude lower power (i haven't measured mine yet), and much lower latency. this memory-in-pixel stuff relies on fabricating an entire flip-flop in every pixel, made of a layer of silicon on the glass, and that capability seems to be only about 13 years old, and only sharp has it
they do have glare but are quite readable in direct sunlight or outdoors in the shade or on a cloudy day
also they cost almost three orders of magnitude more
but they definitely aren't epaper. aside from the glare, speed, contrast, and power consumption differences, they fade in about 30 seconds when you unplug them, rather than staying stable for years, and they don't have grayscale
AlanYx
>in direct sunlight on a hot California day you can see a world of difference between the contrast and glare of a high school graphing calculator and a Kindle.
Sharp Memory LCDs are reflective, not transreflective. They're easier to read outdoors than indoors, much like eink. (Sharp markets these screens for devices like bike computers and gas pumps.) Some of the optical properties are in the same ballpark as eink as well.
knodi123
> its lowest-power mode is nearly a milliwatt, so it will drain the battery flat when it's not being used
Add a hardware power button?
igetspam
I do not need this. At all. Not one bit. Not for a second. It would be foolish of me to spend money on this.
Two, please!
Very cool.
amysox
Your reaction was similar to mine: "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" :)
atentaten
With all the excited responses to this post a feel like a fool because I don't understand how one would go about using this. Admittedly I'm knew this type of product, but I want to be excited too or at least be able to come up with some use cases where I can make an informed choice on whether this product is useful or not. Is there a list or site with ideas on how to make use of products like this?
jack_riminton
Me too, I can’t think of a situation where this would be useful although I’d like to hear how others would use it
jwildeboer
Pocket showrunner device for my studio. Control lights, the ATEM switch, check status etc. A kind of super remote that is open.
allig256
If you're trying to trim down on phone time, but still want to be somewhat contactable?
I guess this would require a phone with a WiFi hotspot when you're out and about, but if you're at home and not wanting to reach for that phone this device could help.
fsflover
If you could install, e.g., Mobian, you would get a full desktop Linux in your pocket with a nice interface.
rwl4
I've ordered my share of little Linux gadgets. I said no more because they were wholly impractical. Well, congrats, you just caused me to pull out my wallet and buy. This looks incredible!
You should sell a case as well for people like me who don't want to bother with 3D printing.
sqfmi
Thanks! We plan to offer 2 cases (CNC aluminum and clear transparent plastic) once we're happy with the design
blackfawn
Rather than make a custom case, it would have been neat to see this PCB just slightly smaller that it'd drop right in the Blackberry 9900 housing to match the keyboard. There are loads of reasonably priced enclosures available that are already designed to fit selected keyboard.
dabluecaboose
What are the odds of the clear plastic being purple and green in classic Nintendo fashion?
sqfmi
That would be really cool! But we may not meet the MOQ to get all those colors made
Zanovis
Do you need support with this design? Happy to help out!
sqfmi
We'll be sharing the STEP model of the device and the enclosure here https://github.com/sqfmi/beepberry-hardware Feel free to hack away!
jbm
-edit- As pointed out below, there is an early access program for developers a little further down on the order page that I missed.
Original comment below ----v
I love the product but I take issue with the term "Order now" on the website.
> Below is the shipping timeline for Beepberry: > Beepberry without Raspberry Pi Zero W: ~ August 2023 > Beepberry with Raspberry Pi Zero W: ~ September 2023
I think it would be more helpful to call it a pre-order on the button. If I click "order now", I'd expect it in 6 weeks, max.
Regardless, I like the concept and look forward to buying it after a few people try it out.
koinedad
It says 50 are available in the site
jbm
Ah, I see what you are talking about now.
> Beepberry Early Access Program > We have 50 units available to ship immediately to developers and hackers. If you would like to be one of the first to receive a Beepberry, please fill out the form below after placing your order.
I'm not sure how I missed that, thank you for pointing it out!
StrangeATractor
The only gripe I have about this is that it appears to be dependent on a microsd card for storage. Is there an alternative? I've been burned one too many times by corrupted storage on those to go there again.
Other than that, I want five of these.
sqfmi
Corrupted storage is a pain :( The Beepberry firmware can safely shutdown the Pi before disconnecting power, so hopefully that will help with SD issues. raspi-config also has a read-only overlay filesystem option now.
bityard
I started buying high endurance SD cards years ago and have never had a problem with them.
kajecounterhack
+1 they're quite cheap now -- as of writing, $17 for a samsung 128gb, $15 for sandisk 128gb on Amazon. I have a fleet of Raspberry Pi that have been using these cards.
The other thing you can do is to buy two and clone your SD card (or back your card up as a `.img`).
csdvrx
BTW are they more sensible to X rays? I've had one die early.
conor_f
I love the form factor here. A few questions:
1) Have you considered how this could be made more mobile friendly? Most places I could see myself using a device like this, I wouldn't have access to WiFi. Is there an equivalent of a USB SIM card adapter that would fit here?
2) What sort of battery life can be achieved with this?
Looks great though! Am very likely to order an iteration of this :)
erohead
1) maybe? this is just a hacker device for now. You can easily add a USB LTE modem if you'd like.
2) battery life will depend on which OS you use, peripherals, software duty cycle etc. It's a hacker device, don't expect it to work without putting in the effort to tune/tweak it.
csdvrx
> You can easily add a USB LTE modem if you'd like.
Would you like some help with that?
I was only planning to add sixel support, but I could prepare you a simple configuration to use a cheap 4G module like the Quectel EC25 () at least for sending/receiving SMS, and maybe acting as an access point.
() Other options would also be possible, like Qualcomm SDX55 and SDX62/SDX65 for 5G, but the Quectel has more community support since it's also used on the linphone
jskulski
(Not OP) I’d find value in this if you were considering publishing a guide.
Been working on a pi400 eink solar powered cyberdeck but haven’t done anything with cell connection yet.
So could follow long for that and for the blackberry.
girvo
The Hayes protocol and 3GPP “standards” will be the death of me, but if you want any help with getting any of the Simcom modules up I have far too much experience with them
mortenjorck
So that appears to be an actual Blackberry keyboard – are they reclaimed? OEM surplus?
erohead
Someone is still manufacturing replacement parts apparently!
m0dest
The trademark issues with the BlackBerry logo on the keyboard, combined with the "Beepberry" name, are going to be a problem.
matbatt38
Is it even legal? (Serious question)
girvo
Why would it not be? BlackBerry the company (as in the hardware one) doesn’t exist anymore, if parts exist why wouldn’t people be able to use them?
filmgirlcw
It does. They just don’t sell hardware. They sold most of the patents but still retain some and they’ve sued over the keyboard before (Google BlackBerry vs Typo keyboard) so it isn’t a dumb question. That said, if someone else is selling an OEM-like part, I doubt this is high volume enough for the people left at BlackBerry to care.
bodge5000
Have been wanting to get a device just like this for a long time to do live-coding (Glicol) on. So glad you had the foresight to expose the rpi pins so I can just stick an audio hat onto it to get audio in/out
souwecera
A PocketChip built by the same person that made the Pebble Time Steel 2 that's on my wrist right now.
Take my money. Again.
ecliptik
I loved my Pocket CHIP until it just stopped working a few days ago, and this Beepberry post today is a perfect coincidence. Since it's an RPI0w can use it as an ad-hoc serial terminal too.
souwecera
'Doh, original Time Steel (my P2+HR died a couple months ago).
If you have any Time Steel 2s laying around...
copperx
I'm sure young me would have found a ton of use cases for this, but now I'm old.
Can someone tell me one or two things this could be useful for? I want to buy it just because it looks awesome.
traverseda
Daylight readable display and physical keyboard make it excellent for all kinds of field work. If you're out doing things in real life this thing seems like a good choice to me. Quick calculation when you're building a chicken coop, use as a glide computer or a biking computer. Lots of outdoor stuff really.
csdvrx
> I'm sure young me would have found a ton of use cases for this, but now I'm old.
Invert the problem: get one and try to hack to do whatever. That may help you regain some teen spirit :)
It may be better if you found some ideas naturally (chasing a rabbit down its rabbit hole is fun, but chasing your own rabbit is even funnier)
However, if you want ideas, here are some simple ones: - listen to your bluetooth devices like toothbrushes, scales, thermometers: try to decode and display what they send. There are many free software projects doing just that for Xiaomi devices
- connect a 4G module and try to send SMS. Most 4G modules can be driven with just AT commands so it shouldn't be too hard. The Quectel EC25 is extensively documented thanks to being present in the PinePhone: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/blob...
- then try to add a GPS antenna to make a field GPS: check https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro#GPS_/_GNSS
- then try to have a LTE data connection, using w3m with its sixel mode to visit google news https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel#w3m-integration
- try to integrate SMS, twitter etc within one client (twitter example: https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel#twitter-client-integrati... ) to post your GPS coordinates to your friends
- one everything works, increase the difficulty: flash a free firmware on the Quectel, and try to improve it, or add functions that would help your other projects, for example A-GPS to get a faster lock: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/tree...
Each one of this project should take at most one day, and may give you ideas to do more!
If you need help, get in touch, my email is in my profile.
calvinmorrison
using the GPIO. But you'd need to build some piggyback connectors. In fact if this had a JST or other connector it would be a lot better. Things like reading resistance values from sensors and displaying them back is pretty trivial, and being able to just load up different scripts to do that instead of, say arduino where you really would need to flash a program for each sensor say, would make it useful.
Pawka
This piece looks really nice and I almost want it!
But have no idea what to do with it. What are your plans folks? How you are using similar hardware?
csdvrx
I would use it to ssh and tmux to my servers, to display stats/logs and start simple scripts when needed, like a "wireless KVM".
I understand many people use smartphones or tablets for that, but I don't like the idea of having a smartphone with me at all times: I have one, but in a drawer. I charge it and use it when I need to travel. It's too intrusive otherwise.
I can use ssh from my laptop, but I like a distraction free environment: most of my apps run in full screen, to help me maintain my concentration.
So a separate device I could turn quickly, check what's happening, and type commands, would be very valuable.
I would certainly try to find a way to add sixel support to the terminal (BSD console terminals have that) then have gnuplot display some key measurements like latency scatters on top of the moving averages.
Another role would be very natural thanks to being cheap: the USB port could help me check devices without having to fear hardware damage to my laptop USB ports (voltage issues etc) or software issues (virus/trojan etc)
TheFreim
> I understand many people use smartphones or tablets for that, but I don't like the idea of having a smartphone with me at all times
This is where I stand. Regrettably it becomes harder and harder now that everything uses 2FA, cannot leave home without the phone.
csdvrx
> cannot leave home without the phone.
You most certainly can: I do that every day.
> Regrettably it becomes harder and harder now that everything uses 2FA
Which companies cause you problems? Maybe I can offer suggestions.
I barely tolerate TOTP (thanks to oathtool), but any business that want to impose SMS 2FA on me will not have me as a client.
ahtavarasmus
I don't have a smartphone so I have installed 2FA app to my laptop. That works great:)
traverseda
I want a "forever computer" and I think this fits the bill. I don't actually expect it to last forever, but with unix command line tools we've got one lineage of computing that has lasted more than 30 years. I want to put a solar panel and a lora modem on it, and have a little computing device that will last the rest of my life. An artifact that will be as useful in 40 years as it is now, like how old calculators with nixie tubes still fundamentally work as calculators.
Might even try finally learning orgmode, maybe use vim-orgmode one it.
resize2996
For similar reasons, general future proofing, I recently started using orgmode for my todo lists, journaling and a light project management workflow. I'm a vim person, and using spacemacs with evil mode has been good for learning. I imagine I'll eventually start from scratch and only keep the pieces I like, but it's been a reasonable starting point.
This looks great for those purposes, it should interact nicely. There's a decent chance I'll pick up the watch today. (Can I make it buzz for pomodoro? Hmm.)
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Hi. I heard HN likes e-paper gadgets so I wanted to share a little side project I’ve been working on with @sqfmi. We’re building Beepberry - a portable e-paper computer for hackers, designed for chatting on Beeper. My day job is running Beeper [0], but I will always have a soft spot for building hardware.
I wanted to create a ‘weekend’ device that would let me stay in touch with friends and family, without the distractions of a full smartphone. I imagined a tiny, hackable e-paper screen with a physical keyboard, powered by a Raspberry Pi, that I could use to chat around my home…and pretty much nothing else.
Before Beeper, the idea probably would not have gone anywhere. Most chat apps do not have an API, making it practically impossible to hack something like this together. Enter Beeper, with connections to 15+ chat networks. Built on top of Matrix, Beeper is fully hackable. You can write alternative fun clients [1], bots [2] and more!
Today, sqfmi is starting to take pre-orders at https://beepberry.sqfmi.com for the first batch. It’s $79 (or $99 including a Pi Zero). Specs: Sharp Memory LCD (same display tech as in Pebble!), Pi Zero (BT/WIFI), physical keyboard, 2000mAh lipo.
On top of being an amazing Beeper chat device, it’s basically an e-paper Cyberdeck that fits in your pocket. It’s a ton of fun to hack on. Keep in mind - THIS IS NOT A REAL FINISHED PRODUCT. It’s basically a devkit.
More info in the blog post: https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-x-sqmfi-beepberry, or join the Discord/Matrix channel https://beepberry.sqfmi.com/docs/getting-started#join-the-be.... I’ll hang out a bit here to answer questions as well.
[0] https://beeper.com [1] https://github.com/tulir/gomuks [2] https://github.com/maubot/maubot