💾 Archived View for gemini.cyberbot.space › gemlog › 2023-07-31-firstbeepy.gmi captured on 2024-06-16 at 12:27:18. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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The Beepy, formerly known as the Beepberry, is a little pocket-size computer handheld with the distinguishing features being the 1-bit monochrome (non-backlit) Sharp Memory LCD and the Blackberry thumb keyboard. The other key feature to this device is that it accepts a Pi Zero form factor computer board of your choice. A few other nice details are the physical power switch, one user-programmable button on the right side and quite a few GPIO pins broken out around the display. Here is what it looks like. Isn't it neat?
Beepy in my hand displaying the smolZINE page
Beepy in my hand displaying the most recent issue of smolZINE
NOTE: You may have noticed the word "Beeper" printed on the back of the PCB in that last photo. Beeper is a universal chat app (ala Trillian if you remember that from the early 00s) that combines multiple chat platforms into a single interface. This is one of Pebble co-founder Eric Migicovsky's pet projects and the Beepy is a kind of joint project of between the two apparently. I'm not particularly interested in that aspect of it personally but I thought it pertinent to explain why that was there. Also, WOW, Trillian still exists and is apprently focused on HIPAA compliant messaging for health care.
In perhaps the most heroic feat of the last 5 years the folks at SQFMI managed to get this quirky little curiosity into the hands of their customers BEFORE their estimated date. They didn't exactly play it safe with their shipping date estimate either. Preorders went live in the middle of May with an August ship date listed for orders that did not include a Raspberry Pi. My order arrived before the end of July!
The short answer is I love it! I'll expand on that more though because it's not a finished, ready to use as-is type product. It is the type of device that will inevitably have some quirks and take some time to smooth out the rough edges. With how new and niche the hardware is that's to be expected but it is quite useable and fun to play with in it's current state. I'm actually quite impressed with how quickly they delivered after they started taking orders and how the core features are pretty much ready as well.
Getting started was not too bad. They have somewhat sparse documentation but it has everything you need to get it working with a Pi Zero. The gist is mount the Pi Zero with the included screws, plug in the battery, flash a micro sd with the headless Raspberry Pi OS image, run their setup script that installs the drivers for the display and keyboard. Very thoughtfully they include a black rubber band to hold the battery to the PCB so it's not flopping around.
It boots to a terminal and that's it. Perfect. The keyboard is quite nice. It feels pretty good to type on and now that I've found the keymap documentation I have access to all the keys and symbols I would ever need. The keyboard has a backlight which I find a bit funny because the screen does not. I'm trying to imagine what situation you would be unable to see the keyboard but could see the display...lol. Needless to say, I'll probably be leaving the keyboard backlight off most of the time to save battery.
Being a terminal focused device it will be best suited to text. I've already browsed some gemini on it and it works just fine as does tut, my fediverse client of choice. All of my terminal shenanigans on my Pinephone have set me up well to be able to get things I use going quickly. There will be some things that don't work as well or at all due to the lower resolution and being monochrome but that's fine. I don't need all my devices to have bright and colorful displays. In fact, that's why I'm so interested in this device in the first place. I want some of my devices to be readable in ambiant light and not beam leds into my eyeballs at all times when in use.
The display does look really good for what it is. It is crisp and very readable in most environments with a reasonable mount of light and looks amazing in bright outdoor light.
My hope is for this to be something I can carry around in my pocket like a PDA and use for notes, light reading and writing, accessing information and maybe a little text-based entertainment. That is if I can coax the hardware into fulfilling my requirements. Which brings me to the improvements I hope to see.
First and foremost my Beepy will not be something I carry around in my pocket in its current state. It is far too fragile as a bare PCB with various components hanging off it with no protection. This won't be the case for long though. There are already models available for 3D printing an enclosure and SQFMI have plans to make a manufactured enclosure available as well. I purchased the Watchy (eink watch) from SQFMI in the past and it was the same deal. Came as a bare PCB project initially, then they decided to include a plastic enclosure at the last minute and after it had been out for a bit they released a few different metal enclosures on their website. So for now I will likely just tinker at my desk or my living room chair carefully until the enclosure can be ordered.
Battery life is an area that I have high hopes for with the Beepy but as of right now it is a big question mark. There is potential for stellar runtime with no display backlight to use power and being 1 bit monochrome means that most use cases will need very modest resources. A functional suspend mode will be key to achieving the kind of amazing battery life that I'm dreaming of. Multiple days of usage without charging is the minimum I'm hoping for but would love to achieve a week or more with proper suspend and power managment tweaks. From the research I've done I don't believe the Raspberry Pi is capable of this as nobody has ever been able to get a Pi to suspend. The benefit of being able to use other boards in the Beepy that aren't RPis will hopefully mean that suspend will eventually be achievable on one of those (better) boards. The one I'm most interested in is the MangoPi MQ Pro, a Pi Zero form factor SBC that sports a RISC V CPU. The MQ Pro has even lower power consumption than the original Pi Zero and I think will be much more likely to support suspend.
I guess those are the only two things that I think need to be solved for me to be satisfied with it. Wait, there is one more thing. It does not have a headphone jack. Luckily this should also be solvable thanks to the GPIO pins or the possibility of a compatible SBC that includes an audio output of its own. I think it will work nicely as an audio player with one of the many nice terminal music players.
The Beepy reminds me a lot of the PocketCHIP. Small hackable handheld computer with modular SBC socket, GPIO breakouts and a hardware keyboard. The Beepy has a smaller display that doesn't do color but it is higher res than PocketCHIP's even at the smaller physical size and is readable in sunlight and moderate ambiant light with no backlight. Despite PocketCHIP's name, the Beepy is much more pocketable. I really liked the PocketCHIP and I think a lot of the promise it held will be better realized with the Beepy.
