Infiltrated Code

Apparently I don't have nearly enough half-finished projects on the go. Nevertheless, and inspired by many of the cool hackers, tinkerers, and makers I know (c0debabe, LambdaCalculus, The Wrew and The Gibson – looking at you) I decided I wanted to hack together my first Cyberdeck. Timing was characteristically terrible: right before DEF CON when I was already up to my optical sensors with prepping a talk for Tech Reclaimers on the community stage, setting up Hackers Trivia for the hackers.town village, plus modding (i.e. breaking) music players as research for a talk I'm giving on liberating your music – also in the hackers.town village. None of this is a good idea, but I seem to thrive on this kind of chaos. Even if it's self-created.

So here I am. With no plan, no expertise, just fumbling my way through trying to make a Cyberdeck. I'm putting the punk into cyber here, and it's going to be a slow-burn project. I'm determined to enjoy the process this time (especially the learning) rather than my usual defect of being too invested in the outcome. I'll keep iterating. What I make is probably going to suck - it will be flimsy, unreliable, look bad, crash, overheat, and probably smell funny. Then I'll fix it somehow, and maybe it will improve, or maybe I'll fuck it up in new and unique ways... but dammit I'm going to iterate, learn and have fun.

My goals are broadly:

• Clamshell case (somehow)
• Terminal use cases primarily
• 80's Cyberpunk cold/war aesthetic
• Maybe something with meshcore
• Usable without going blind or getting wrist cramps

My skillset: competent programmer comfortable down at system level. I tend to break things when I open them up – consequently I learn how to fix them after. I've replaced MacBook batteries. I've soldered exactly once. Oh did I mention I don't own a 3D printer and know next to nothing about that either? I'm close to both a Micro Center and several Central Computers.

So far I've gathered the following hardware:

• Raspberry Pi 5 (4GB)
• 10.1inch Capacitive Touch Screen LCD (B) with Case, 1280×800, IPS Screen
• Raspberry Pi Pico 2 for the keyboard controller with Circuit Python firmware

I was able to bench test all of that. So far so good.

My next challenge will be choosing switches and keycaps. I'm going with Kalih Choc v1 switches and low profile keycaps. The sampler arrived over the weekend... how do I even choose amongst all these awesome switches? I like clicky but that's probably annoying for field (read coffee shop) usage.

I'll pick this back up after DEF CON, probably after I've re-soldered a new battery into an old Creative Zen Mosaic player and re-assembled my modded iPod 5th Gen – guess who broke the screen on that?

Make something, break something. Rip the system.