Kenneth (aka Raspduino Uno) is nothing if not prepared, and he’s getting ready to survive in a post-apocalyptic world by building his own Raspberry Pi 5-powered cyberdeck. Meet PiDex.
In other cool news, we’re pretty sure this is the first Raspberry Pi 5 cyberdeck in the world. Feel free to read us for filth in the comments section if you know this to be a lie; all engagement is good engagement. Or at least that’s what we keeping telling ourselves.
Hardware
- Raspberry Pi 5
- Rugged waterproof box (the weather will be especially bad and the terrain especially rough in the after times)
- 7-inch touchscreen LCD for the main viewing screen
- 0.96-inch OLED to display the status of the Raspberry Pi 5
- Mini backlit keyboard (very important for when the street lamps go out post-apocalypse)
- Power bank
- USB hub with four ports
- RJ45 Ethernet splitter
- USB to 3.5mm headphone jack (so that you can listen to your doomsday comms in private)
- Big red toggle switch so you feel powerful and important when firing up your cyberdeck
A copy of the Wikipedia database lives on a flash drive nestled in its own foam-lined slot inside the case. Dubiously verified facts will always be important to humanity, even in its dying days. Raspberry Pi 5 is, of course, capable of much more than just scrolling through wikis; the build video showcases PiDex playing YouTube videos and all sorts. It will be nice to have something to distract us from the fact it’s moss for dinner again and to take our minds off those strange, anguished howls we keep hearing at twilight.
Portable solar panels can be drafted in to give you extra juice on the go, or, of course, any juice at all.
Arts and crafts
Kenneth first mapped out all the hardware on paper before using it as a template to cut into the foam inside the rugged case. He cut up a plastic ring binder to serve as mounting for the big LCD and little OLED screens living in the lid of the case. He cut around the other half of the ring binder so that it sat perfectly around the hardware living in the bottom half of the case.
The letters making up the PiDex logos on the outside and inside of the case were 3D printed and superglued on to display plates before being stuck to the case itself.
And that’s the computing setup done, all ready for the end times. The only things left to sort out are a little bit of shelter, food, water, soap, medical supplies, heat, and security, then we’re all good to subsist.
