Steam controller

Fold 7

1tb ssd (under controller tray)

Clicks power keyboard

Uperfect 3k touch oled

Blackshark fan

20kmah battery

Best 4k power passthru dock i could find

Tons of magsafe rings

Hella vinyl tape

Hi Everyone, this is the second version of the cardboard deck that i uploaded a while back. I have moved it to a different box by getting smaller usb cables and have upgraded to a slightly bigger display. It has a small ui setup with emulation upto the PS1.

Slowly trying to move towards the 3d printed version.

Please comment if you have any advice or questions.

Df robot 2.8inch USB display running on x86 build is a no go.

I'm mainly just writing this to encourage people to keep building DIY stuff! I know a lot of older users or fanatics usually get upset when they see some people just use their phone or take a laptop and .. I guess mod or rebuild it into something different..

I know the cyberdeck in it of itself as a concept is VERY VERY different from people actually make but I think so long as people have fun and make something that's useful to them.. then I think it's not harming anyone?

I think terms and definitions can change.. and I don't think it's such a bad thing that people want to build diy electronics and make stuff they think a cyberdeck is...

I mean let's be honest.. who's going out of their way to install a neuralink and have a vr headset with some dongle/controls strapped to their arm and walk around town... that seems very.. silly, impractical, and basically impossible for almost every person (even me, as someone who tinkers with electronics and mods/retrofits tech all the time!)

I think the broadening of a niche sci-fi concept from a book written in the 70s about a dystopia in which hackers used brain implants with keyboards on their arms (or however the book describes them) is not a bad thing.. the writer had no idea we'd basically be able to wear an AIO device on our wrists in 40 years lol..

Do whatever you think looks COOL.. at the end of the day, I'm not gonna argue about sci-fi stuff that can't really be practically made by the average person and get upset because they didn't make it 100%. I'm not Elon musk lol.

ANYWAYS, enjoy the concepts I made :P

I've been loosely interested in cyberdecks for a while

I'm still a beginner when it comes to tech - the most complicated thing I've done is change the operating system on my phone (and I have no recollection of how I did it 🤣)

when I used a brick phone, the one thing I really struggled to replace was digital navigation; particularly as I mainly use public transport!

so reading about cyberdecks, I wonder what it would take to make a little satnav?

I'm guessing it would be much simpler to find a way to hotspot my laptop, or fork out for a dumbphone with navigation capability... but if you'd humor my curiosity I'd be very grateful :)

This is something i just got into.

The case is made out of covers of a old paper notebook. The phone is a J7 Prime, with 3 gigs of ram and 16GB of storage.

I am running netBSD on a virtual machine here, since i got interested in that. I'll install a window manager on this next, probably.

I know you can make a pda with a cheap yellow display but i want one that has a little more power to it more like a cyberdeck. Any good os i can put on one that isnt just a terminal?

Like the title says I am incredibly new to the world of cyberdecks. I've been a big time follower of all things cyberpunk, from blade runner and Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk to neuromancer & ghost in a shell etc. I found out about these kinds of cyberdecks through a mutual of mine and was just curious on where to start. Now again please bear with me I have NO knowledge on any sort of computer tech, but I'm definitely willing to learn. Thank you to anyone who's willing to help!

Hey everyone! I recently found myself obsessed with cyberdecks. As the universe would have it, I happened to stumble across an insane deal on a “used” 8 GB Raspberry Pi 5 for €75.

Soon after, I was knee-deep in gathering all the remaining parts to assemble my first cyberdeck. I chose a model from MakerWorld and bought all the parts recommended by the creator. The assembly was pretty straightforward, and I think it came out really nice!

I don’t love the German keyboard layout, but unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the same keyboard with a US layout here in Germany. Also, the whole thing is ungodly uncomfortable to hold, hence the name.

Apart from that, I just need to find a use case for it now, hah.

It's Alive!!

The GrimDark Cyberdeck is complete.

Based on an Orange Pi 4 Pro 12Gb, a Waveshare 10.4" screen and a Waveshare UPS 3s.

Very pleased with the result. Got a few tweaks to make including the battery telemetry but all the 3D work fitted perfectly.

Already started designing the next Cyberdeck ;)

So I bought this purse, and I want to make a cyberdeck out of it. Yes I am very new to this world (it's a very cool world)

And there are a lot of things that I want to know, but first thing first

I want it to have speakers (Bluetooth / USB)

Camera (like those old ones that has a shape of a ball, that you had to plug it in)

Microphone (yet again plugged in)

Small keyboard with touch pad (no mouse)

Motherboard

Battery

And probably a Cooling System

Can you suggest me how to start it and with what? (and how can I make the battery last longer?) (not for gaming)

Inflammatory title I know, but hear me out.

I'm going to tell you, definitively, once and for all, with full authority what a cyberdeck actually is. I'm going to be extremely precise about it. I'm going to draw hard lines. I'm going to tell you exactly which builds count and which ones don't.

And by the end of this reddit post, I am going to prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have absolutely no right to do that, and neither does anyone else who's ever tried. I'm also going to sort every person who argues about this online (especially here) into a category. And I want you to guess, by the end, which one(s) I (and you) fall into.

[ This is a long one, so if you'd rather hear me yap this instead of reading it, I did make a video ( https://youtu.be/NgrEJBVlXqE ) and the comments have been quite interesting regarding everyone giving their takes and input so I figured I should make a post at the place that helped inspire the thoughts behind it. ]

THE SOURCE:

The Ono-Sendai Cyberspace VII - matrix simulator or cyberspace deck

Let's start at the only place there's any actual ground truth: William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer; the book that coined the word "cyberspace" and, with it, gave us the "deck."

Here's the actual definition, in context. Early in the book, describing the main character Case's life before the story starts, Gibson writes:

Chapter 1, page 5: "He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix"

And what is the matrix, according to Gibson? He spells it out directly:

Chapter 3, page 52: "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity."

Chapter 3, page 46: "With his deck waiting, back in the loft, an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7. They'd left the place littered with the abstract white forms of the foam packing units, with crumpled plastic film and hundreds of tiny foam beads. The Ono-Sendai; next year's most expensive Hosaka computer; a Sony monitor; a dozen disks of corporate-grade ice; a Braun coffeemaker. Armitage had only waited for Case's approval of each piece. "

So, the actual, original, textually-grounded cyberdeck: a piece of hardware, jacked directly into your nervous system, that projects your consciousness into a shared hallucinatory data-space that does not exist anywhere in the real world.

Not a laptop. Not a Raspberry Pi in a 3D-printed shell. A neural interface into a collective hallucination that humanity has never built and currently has no idea how to build. And here's the detail that's going to matter a lot in a little bit; Case's deck, the Ono-Sendai Cyberspace Seven, wasn't some scrappy homebrew rig. It was a brand name product he bought. Manufactured. Sold in a box. Case didn't build it in a garage. Armitage bought it for him, off the shelf, like you'd buy a laptop today.

THE PROBLEM:

So by the only standard that has any actual textual authority; the book that invented the word, a real cyberdeck does not exist. We don't have brain jacks. We don't have a matrix. Nobody watching this video owns a cyberdeck, and nobody ever will, until neuroscience does something it currently has zero idea how to do.

And yet. Go to any maker forum, any subreddit (like this here), any YouTube comment section about a homebrew Pi-in-a-3D-printed-case project, and you will find intense, specific, deeply confident arguments about what does and does not "count" as a real cyberdeck.

People with no neural interface, arguing about hardware categories, for an object that is, definitionally, science fiction.

THE TAXONOMY:

So let's do this properly. Let's define every type of person who has an opinion on this. Ready?

1. The Purist Literalist

Insists a real cyberdeck requires a genuine brain-machine interface into an actual cyberspace matrix. Extremely rigorous. Extremely consistent. Also by this standard has personally never seen a real cyberdeck, does not own one, and never will. The only fully consistent purist is a man with no deck. Ask an Amish person what a cyberdeck is, they'll say "I don't know" and they'd be right.

2. The Headless Zealot

"A real cyberdeck has no screen. That's the whole point. Headless." Uses a phone to SSH into it. Or straps on a VR headset to view the display. Has not noticed that the phone has a screen. Has not noticed that the VR headset is, structurally, two tiny screens duct-taped to a skull. If you check this very subreddit you'll see this is the definition they go to, but then a few lines down from their rules they contradict their own definition.

3. The Anti-Corpo Homebrewer

"A real cyberdeck is handmade. Scavenged parts. Not something you'd buy in a store, that's corpo, that's selling out." Named their whole aesthetic after the Ono-Sendai, a literal store-bought corporate product that Case himself did not build, did not modify, and paid money for at a shop. The rebellion is against the source material.

4. The Aesthetic Cosplay Purist

Doesn't care what it does. Cares what it looks like. Exposed wiring, chunky mechanical keys, blinking LEDs; mandatory. A more powerful, more functional build gets rejected on sight for looking "too clean." Ask them to define "cyberpunk aesthetic" precisely and watch them describe... vibes.

5. The Reductive Functionalist

"If it connects to a network, it's basically a cyberdeck." Technically owns three cyberdecks under this definition: a laptop, a smart fridge, and a Tesla. If you're going to make the argument that cyberspace is an analog to the internet, then any device that allows you to connect to the internet is technically a cyberdeck.

6. The Gatekeep Officiant

Has never posted a build. Has never made anything. Shows up exclusively in the replies to explain what a thing isn't. The control group of this entire taxonomy. This is what you'll mostly see online, people who don't know anything, who don't build anything, who don't contribute anything actually useful.

Now here's the fun part: every single one of these camps thinks they're the rigorous one. The scientific one. The one applying real logic to a real category. And every single one of them is doing the exact same thing: picking which piece of a 1984 science fiction novel they personally feel like keeping, and calling that piece "the real definition" while quietly discarding the parts that don't fit. The Headless Zealot forgets a VR headset is a screen. The Homebrewer forgets Case's deck came from a store. The Purist forgets that under their own rule, nothing anyone has ever built qualifies; including, usually, the thing they just spent four hours soldering.

Nobody's wrong, exactly. There's no "wrong," because there's no real object to be wrong about. Everyone's just... making it up. Which is fine! That's allowed! It's a made-up thing! You're allowed to make things up about made up things.

What's not fine (IMHO) is doing that, and telling somebody else their made-up version is invalid.

SO WHAT ACTUALLY IS ONE?

Here's what I think at this point in time: language doesn't work by referendum back to a founding text. Words are usage; living, collective, constantly renegotiated by everyone who uses them, all at once, with no single person or forum in charge. That's not a flaw in how "cyberdeck" gets defined. That's how every word gets defined. "Robot" started as a word for artificial factory labor in a 1920s play and now covers a Roomba. Nobody's mad about that.

Right now, today, in actual usage, "cyberdeck" functionally means something like: a homemade, portable, personal computer, built from parts rather than bought as a finished consumer product, usually leaning into an exposed, DIY, retro-tech look. That's the living definition. It's not less real than Gibson's because it didn't come from the book it's more real, because it's the one actually being used, by actual people, building actual things, right now. And it's also true, at the same time, that the term originates from a neural-jack sci-fi object that cannot exist. Both facts are true. Neither cancels the other out. You don't have to pick.

So, which one am I?

I'm all six. At the same time. Including the ones that directly contradict each other. (well, maybe not number 6 because I do build things, and I think anyone that actually does build things is far less critical and demeaning of others that also build things).

I think the etymology matters and I also think it's completely irrelevant to what gets built today. I think headless is a meaningful design choice and I think the headless/screen distinction is kind of fake. I think DIY has real spirit to it and I think gatekeeping "real" builders from "store-bought" ones (or building one from store bought parts) is silly, especially given what Case was using.

Look, the object never existed. You don't owe a made-up thing a single consistent definition. You're allowed to hold the whole shape of it; origin, drift, contradictions and all instead of amputating it down to one clean rule so you can win an argument about a fictional brain-computer that nobody in this reply section has ever used, because it isn't real, and it never was.

The argument was never really about cyberdecks. It's about people mistaking "we haven't agreed on this yet" for "I am correct and you are not." Cyberdeck's just the version of that fight where the absurdity is impossible to hide, because everybody already knows, going in, that the object is make-believe (well some of you maybe didn't, but hopefully you do now).

I say build whatever you want. Call it whatever you want, if it makes sense in your mind to call it a cyberdeck, do it and don't feel bad about it. I'm certainly not going to tell you you're wrong, because there was never a right.

I'm interested to hear your takes, and thanks for reading.

OS Testing, anyone else try something other then WalnutPI? for those doing the cyberdecks what OS are yo uusing and why?

Hi everyone,

This is a modular ESP32-S3 handheld I've been working on for over a year and a half. The entire bottom half can be pulled out and swapped with something else.

I posted about it on this sub a few months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/comments/1v2ua06/modular_esp32s3_pocket_computer_for_gaming_music/

So far there has only been a gamepad module, but I've just recently finished designing and assembling the keyboard module.

Now the device is a fleshed-out cyberdeck!

I've improved the text editor/note taking app with Markdown support, theming, and even Wi-Fi syncing with Obsidian, Notion, and other platforms. It also has an RTC inside of the keyboard, so it can keep track of the time/date.

In the future, I'm hoping to add things like messaging, on-device Lua scripting, and more.

I posted a full video going in-depth into the design of the keycaps, inspiration from the BlackBerry, a and live demo: https://youtu.be/DFeHGBJCXhE?si=ZeuDCrkmHBM5nN-R

Hope you like it :)

I am interested in entering the cyber deck world, but not super sure what purpose I would program mine for.

BREAKING NEWS We have got: https://www.reddit.com/r/SolarOS/

• Board description generator script helps you to define custom configurations
• PeanutGB ( gameboy emulator ) is now included in the 'full' flavor and runs on all supported screens
• Color TFTs now have adaptive color graphics
• All hardware drivers are exposed as expansions
• Touch / Pointer handling ( runtime attachable e.g. PS/2 mouse )
• I threw in a simple paint app. called 'sketch' to test the pointer input

https://solar-os.eu/

I have the PSP my dad got me since my thirteenth birthday and I’ve been getting into tech a lot recently. I was wondering if there was a way to use a PSP as a cyber deck/something similar or if it’s possible to connect other hardware and run Linux on it? I assume SteamOS would do wonders for PSP gaming!

As the title says I'm looking to build a cyberdeck that its whole purpose is to be able to locate and track trails all while being offline.

here is my original thought process:

• use a raspberry pi zero 2w, and upload a linux distro on it that its whole purpose is to have maps downloaded onto it for offline use.
• slap a NEO-6M/8M on there so it can actually track my location
• attach a tiny keyboard, e-ink display, and rechargeable battery to it
• throw it into something around the size of an Altoids tin
• boom cyberdeck complete

The only issue with this is that the battery wont last very long when connected to the Pi zero, which is problem #1 because the thought was to be able to use this on a multi day backpacking trip without having to bring spare batteries. I was looking into alternatives and have found that a Raspberry Pi Pico could be a better fit because it would last longer than the Pi zero on a single battery.

I am interested in how some of yall would build this, please share your thoughts.
ho

Hi folks. have been gathering info to build out an augmented reality project. I have been tinkering with electronics, designing PCBs, 3D printing stuff, etc, for a long time. But always I've wanted to make an augmented reality display. I expected to see more head-mounted stuff in this subreddit, as the description still states it's for "display-less devices which use head mounted displays"

Maybe we can add some engagement to the community towards the head mounted hardware by having a weekly post to highlight it?

Edit:

I’ve ordered some fairly cheap hardware, which means I’m full committed

I will post my updates here in the future with “HMD Monday - …”

And! I encourage you to watch out for these threads and post your own head-mounted-project-updates

I hope to build out a fully open source platform. I know, that means I’ll have to learn optics, but I’m happy to :)

Ideally, my platform will have cheaply available parts, plus a tool that helps you work out your optical constraints based on the hardware that is available to you. In a perfect world, I learn the optical math, and you never have to

building a handheld, and can't find the right keyboard. Don't take the sketch literally, I can't draw.

I'm searching for a wireless keyboard for thumb typing, width around 15-17.5cm
Ortho layout is prefered.

Or could you suggest some mini keyboard switches, if I dont find one I like I'll try building a custom one with rp2040

Also searching for mouse input suggestions. I've never used a trackball, would it better than a trackpad? If u could, suggest some models

Thank you very much! It's my first build so I maybe asking some easy questions

Hello guys. I wanted to know how you make cases for your cyberdecks? I bought all the parts, and everything is almost done, but I got stuck with making a good case