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The fortuitous day hath arrived. A bouncing babby Raspad abides ready to be born. The following initial report is tendered from the perspective of a semi-tech-literate hermit who wishes to use this linux tablet as a daily driver, a custom information prosthetic. I hope to file several reports with an eye to helping other solarpunk hermits deploy the Raspad to its utmost potential.
There are a few countercultural options for tablets currently available, most focussing on the dubious proposition of deploying Android devices with Linux.
For me personally, Raspad emphatically leads due to the sheer field serviceability of the design. Even the slightly tech daunted is heartened to find that virtually everything inside a Raspad is replaceable with minimal fuss, from battery to motherboard. This singular virtue must delight any tinkerer.
Furthermore, Raspad is consciously designed for maximal IO funtimes. Unlike most tablets, a full suite of USB ports ensures data permeability. The Raspberry Pi 4’s GPIO ensures that a bevy of projects can use the Raspad as a test bed even in the most rigorous conditions. And where iPad has no direct way to physically exchange data, never mind replace the OS, the Raspad is friendly to all such needs.
As for form factor, the Raspad is nonpareil. A wedge shape is far less ungainly when propping the device, while it is also trim enough to fit into my purse, an absolute need.
- I do not currently have regular internet. As such, issues must be worked out ahead of time, with recourse to notes when a rare day is afforded for downloads. Kludges must be worked out on the fly, without the collective wisdom of the skilled.
- Nearly all power for this device is off grid, generated by solar panels. The recommended voltage for the Raspad is 15v. The home solar power system is a 12v bus, which in practice means the voltage swings between 11 to 15v over the course of a day.
- Further user eccentricities include a middling Linux CLI skill set, a stubborn preference for MATE desktop despite enjoying the portability of tablets, and the need for autism friendly UX enhancements.
- I also strongly desire a multi language interface, with CJKVZ input and custom keyboards a major consideration going forward. I will be attempting to get Tegaki or a similar handwriting IME working for Chinese input. I reckognize this may be unlikely.
- Eventually I would like to physically modify the Raspad with several handy additions, from a camera and mic to an enhanced battery. Some modifications may be 3D printed and bolted to the chassis. I’d like to add a detachable epaper display eventually for optimal power modesty and comfort when reading.
The Raspad 3 runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 at its core, but does not need to be purchased with this. Lately global supply chain JIT overefficiencies have made these rare to find. Thankfully, I had a Raspi 4 on hand. It is worth keeping a few of these delectable toys around for spares and side projects.
Some MicroSD cards to load OSes. I say cards plural as one’s preferences may change and a backup here is also warranted for the rough and ready.
A compact Bluetooth / USB keyboard with trackpad or mouse is also needful, at least at first. I am glad to have anticipated this, as touchscreen soft keyboard takes some setup.
A screwdriver for the sort of tiny screws infotech gizmos have.
I won’t much belabour the process of building the device, as such info is readily available on the Raspad site and online elsewhere. I encountered no real issues in doing so.
The Raspi 4 core board connects to the motherboard / IO board with several cute, tiny cables. I anticipated these might wiggle free with use, but am heartened to find both cable plugs and board jacks of more solid make than usual. There is some firm snap-in. The installation of the Raspberry Pi board is a bit troubled by the stiffness and extra length of some cables. I found that by installing the lower right screw first (as one faces the Raspi by schematic) this allows the others to come along without much trouble. This, especially if one arches by hand the Ethernet and HDMI cables a bit before installation.
The included instructions do not mention the placement of the accelerometer chip. It is very smol. It fits on pins 1-6 of the GPIO, with its tongue sticking inward toward the board. I worried this might be wont to slip off, but it feels quite firm. Pin numbering is known by a handy cheat sheet card included. A spare IRQ jumper or two might secure it further; if you do this, make sure to cut the metal bridge in the jumpers to avoid imminent sadness.
I had a half day of internet access to get the fundamentals of the OS working.
The Sunforger documentation currently seems in a state of flux. The wiki was down. They have abandoned the RaspadOS, which is probably for the best, opting to provide a QuickStart tutorial to getting Raspi OS reasonably working. This was all well and good, but the option to download this as PDF did not well work for me; it dumps to pdf the text with no pictures. Not helpful for the offline.
Several comments online suggest using Ubuntu with the tablet as a far more developed tablet UI. But I decided to try it out with Raspi OS first, to see the more raw ins and outs with an OS tailored to the chipset. Ubuntu is forthcoming.
The SD card installer worked wonderfully, surprisingly so. Even more, it immediately booted up without any noticeable errors. After poking about the LXDEish environment, I’m pleasantly surprised by how usable it is with a variety of X programmes. On the touchpad at least it is quite fluid, if lacking in customization.
However, as noted in current documentation, the Raspi OS devs need to deal with some bugs in touchscreen implementation. Mostly this concerns menus, I found, with I believe branched gtk menus not working with touch. Sometimes when attempting these drop menus, the interface will “stick” and I cannot then open taskbar menus. A bump with the touchpad resets this, which leads me to believe this bug should be a trivial fix.
The documentation described right-click mod is heartily recommended. I’m hoping a similar middle-click mod or gesture (perhaps two finger tap) would be a similar gimme.
After setting up the OS, including my usual idiosyncratic aliases, I tossed a few programmes onto the device to toy with for stress testing. These included Stellarium, LibreOffice suite, SimuTrans, Wine, dosbox, and Ibus.
My number one worry was the robustness of OnBoard, the soft keyboard. It has taken a bit of fiddling to get personalized, but I quickly found that OnBoard is indeed ready for prime time. It’s an impressive bit of kit, allowing far more user customization than iPad offers. Poking through the configurations, I found that the keyboards are a fairly readily understandable mix of XML and SVG. Some learning curve, but I hope to make a few for this platform.
Onboard could use some more menu options to deal with autocorrect libraries and customs. I like a few of the habits ingrained by iPad, such as double space providing a period. But for English and a few other European languages, the autocorrect works wonderfully. Once I resized and familiarized myself, the keyboard worked with little error to write and learn my idiosyncrazies. I’d like to shut off the predictive panel, which I find beyond manners for a computer. So far I’ve not found a way to keep the OnBoard English IME working without it.
OnBoard plays well with Ibus, one of the main CJK input method editors. I was quite pleased with this. Intelligent Pinyin, Stroke, and Wubi all work well. Rime I installed but is not yet recognized.
Tegaki *is* recognized by Ibus, but does not work out of the apt box, of course. I’ve never yet gotten that thing to work, but it is a major imperative going forward. One chief virtue of tablet is being able to use handwriting, especially in Chinese, which I prefer for some characters not often in the standard glossaries.
Likewise, Rime is absolutely needful in this UN Decade of Indigenous Languages; I’d like to type in non-standard Mandarin dialects with more facility and use Wubi for Correct Chinese rather than the mainlander character variants usually offered.
The main immediate issue for non-latin input with Onboard is that the keyboard must be modified to display and input such characters. But again, this seems far more doable than with iPad where one must use Unicode Pro and have no recourse to autocorrect tables.
On the whole, I am pleasantly surprised with the accessibility of OnBoard. It is ready to go for European languages, given a bit of patience with setup. I anticipate finding or creating options for CJKVZ and other languages without too much hassle.
Bravi, OnBoard devs.
As stated, I hope to use Raspad as a daily information prosthetic. Primo, this comes down to calendar and alarums. The programme should run and bug me when I wish and no more.
I downloaded a host of calendar programmes, but most have two serious defects for the moment: many don’t play well with the extant Raspi OS drop menu bug. Furthermore, none provide Chinese dates that I’ve yet discovered, never mind the option to create repetitive events on Asian calendars.
So far only the Emacs calendar I’ve found can do so. But this calendar I’ve yet to become proficient with enough to find comfortable and find it unlikely to do so for the fast deployment of tablet context. Furthermore, the *nix Chinese calendar libraries are, shall we say, idiosyncratic on their own, using names and forms not typical for those who use these lunisolar calendar systems.
I can see that I may have to cook up a combined Chinese-European calendar GUI programme suitable to my needs. Optimally, a Qt or GTK gizmo which interfaces with crontab and one of the *nix Chinese calendar libraries would be nice. I hope to survey FLOSS calendar projects more in depth at a later time, and perhaps add what ills I can develop to a project.
One of the most remarked and immediately difficult issues with Raspad is power consumption. On Raspi OS at least, this is currently next to nothing. The battery bank included with Raspad should be more than sufficient.
The devs note their stock bank is 33Wh, a few 18650’s piled in with a controller. Again, I adore this for sheer field serviceability. This is the battery bank we need for low waste and optimum long term use, especially as supply chain issues become more common.
I haven’t yet poked around the chipset to see if it can be managed by the widgets available for intel devices. I’m hopeful it should be so, given the tinker/maker/hacker user base of Raspi. It is indeed a major issue for portable deployment. Even on standby, it seems wasteful and I suspect several of the unused ports remain fully powered.
Likewise, the small muffin fan inside the case could do with adaptive management. It plugs into the Raspad IO board, but I found also works fine on the 5v GPIO pins from the Raspi. So it should be manageable. Otherwise, I may just solder on a hard switch for it on the box.
My wall mounted ammeter, which is impossible to set true, claims Raspad on Raspi OS draws 0.6 to 0.9 amps usually. Again, this is probably an undercount, a rough machine estimation I watch with comparisons. My laptop draws about twice this. And indeed, when I plug in a usb HDD to the Raspad, power consumption is about that of a laptop.
One more power expenditure is of course the screen. The Raspad brightness controls are welcome buttons, but they don’t seem to dim the screen far enough for my preference. I suppose most users want a bright screen, but for my field use this is obstreperous. No doubt these parameters are adjustable somewhere in a conf file.
Currently the device on Raspi OS works a bit over 2 hours constantly. About as much as my well worn and far less serviceable iPad. I admit power management is well beyond my current ken! But I don’t see how these issues aren’t fixable at the software end with strategic and adaptive underclocking. Thus I remain optimistic. I will poke around online a bit in hopes of solutions.
Until I ask around as to the reasonable tolerances of the Raspad power supply, I am feeding the Raspad from a UPS inverter to strain out the solar panel bus voltage ups and downs. A waste I don’t like on principle, up-inverting to then down-convert again for a device which “should” take 9-18v raw, is silly but hardly a dealbreaker. Still, eventually best to cut out that middleman, especially for backpacking.
Oh, a final gripe, if minor. The power box on the AC line included is peculiar in that it has a long AC tail to a bizarrely short DC neck. Like .5m short. Hardly trouble for the solarpunkish; one can solder in an extension and I shall. But a bit funny. I suppose they got a deal on a peculiar warehouse overstock.
Raspad 3 is far more developed than I had once feared. Setting it up for offline daily driver use will take some internet research and time and a few kludges. But I see nothing insurmountable so far. It hazards to be a far more adaptable a platform for my use than either Android or Apple’s stock options. These corporate prisons I’ve long outgrown. If a few backup parts can be put aside, I hope to not have another tablet (or phone) for a decade or more.
I am eager to see how Linux can fit in my purse and backpack. The manifold ports make a digital text mode radio geek drool. With a portable power supply and solar panel, this provides an optimum long term trek tech platform. (Say that fast thrice.)
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