Like most horrible ideas, this one started as a post on 4chan.
For those unaware, cyberdecks are a totally stupid thing from 30 year old William Gibson books surpassed in every way by laptops. The idea was basically strapping an amiga or C64 to your arm. Not learning from the last few decades of advancements, people take broken down laptops, shove their motherboards in massive boxes, shove a mechanical keyboard on top and call it a day. Unless you have video glasses they're totally useless.
Part of my post:
"Handwire a keyboard out of mx blues hooked up to a 32u4 pumping shit into a stripped down dev board and plaster the base of the unit with lipol batteries. There, something the size of a mini tenkeyless with enough power to run a vr headset for two hours."
People liked the idea, well, they more said "Well if you're so clever you bloody do it".
So I will. And it will be great, then everyone will realize how much better UMPC's and laptops and ph
I'm currently waiting for the parts for my cyberdeck to arrive. I don't really have a good solution for the interface though as the current VR googles all require 1 or more power outlets and I'd like it to be portable but not have a screen.
Any suggestions?
I responded:
Dear sir/madam, How on earth do you people actually utilize these everso titanic devices? By golly? If it were not some costume play from your gamahuchen SilhouetteGallop bescumber they're three times the volume they need to be, and on top of that harrowing as rantallion to use. I tried typing on a watchphone, the hardest part wasn't the screen size, it's how blooming awkward it is to try and crisscross your arms and type, especially if you have to push the nontyping elbow away from you to get space. You Arfarfan'arf are so uncreative with the design, you try to make the excrement look like you're all leet hacksaws but none of you even seem to know the most basic diy electronics. How is that garbage cyberpunk? Handwire a keyboard out of mx blues hooked up to a 32u4 pumping trash into a stripped down dev board and plaster the base of the unit with lipol batteries. There, something the size of a mini tenkeyless with enough power to run a vr headset for two hours.
Response:
Well. Go make one in your cuck shed then
Me:
I darn well will and it'll be the best bothersome cyberdeck you munchkins have ever ruddy seen.
Finally, a second sane mind:
Not previous guys but do it. I like idea of deck, but they seem so cumbersome.
So, here's the plan:
Use the guts from my other little keyboard project as a base for this things keyboard.
Order 50 or so MX blues and lay them out to my liking in the most compact space I can. Wire them up, make a plate to sit them on no wider than the keycaps.
Under, shove the fastest little dev board/intel chip I can get my hands on. Beside it, as many batteries as I can fit. Enclose it all.
I'm jamming a projector in there if I haven't made a good HMD by then.
Oh, and of course, I'll pack the thing with speakers.
Anyway, I'll finish my little keyboard, then order a bunch of MX blue switches. See you in a couple months.
Video goggles might not be the right answer. Small touchscreens exist and work quite well. The problem then, could be that you're not making a cyberdeck but instead making a pipboy?
'hehe ill prove you wrong!!'
*doesn't post an update for four years*