PortaPi (Portable Raspberry Pi Zero Terminal/Cyberdeck)

Portable Raspberry Pi Zero Terminal/Cyberdeck
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updated February 4, 2024

Description

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This is my latest project I am dubbing the “PortaPi” made out of parts I had laying around. This is definitely not as polished as I would like but it is functional. Print with supports for the ports and the switch. 

To assemble I ended up drilling holes for the screws that hold the case together.

It consists of:

  • Raspberry Pi Zero W
  • Waveshare 2 inch LCD
  • Solderparty BBQ20KBD
  • Adafruit MicroLipo
  • DC Boost Module
  • 1200mAh Battery
  • Toggle Switch

Some Tips:

  • The pegs that the boards sit on inside the case are designed to be melted down with a soldering iron to hold them in place.
  • The toggle switch I am using can be replaced with any kind of simple switch, this one I just had on hand.
  • The boost module is there to boost the battery's power from 4.2v to 5.0v so the Pi is functional.
  • The toggle switch does not act as a safe shutdown, it merely just cuts power from the MicroLipo to the boost module.

Some basic instructions for wiring: The battery connects to the MicroLipo, then to the toggle switch, then to the boost module. From there it goes to the Raspberry Pi's 5v and ground pins on the GPIO. The screen and keyboard are also connected to the GPIO pins. 

To get the screen working I suggest following Waveshare's documentation which I found to be excellent. https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/2inch_LCD_Module

For the keyboard over I2C, I ended up using the driver from this repository. https://github.com/wallComputer/bbqX0kbd_driver/ 

The main issue with this driver is that in the desktop interface of Raspberry Pi OS most of the alternate key mappings for the keyboard are non-functional. I hope this gets fixed soon but for now you could potentially wire the keyboard up over USB instead of I2C and that would remove the need for the driver.
 

 

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The author marked this model as their own original creation.

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