The Beepy PDA Experiment Part Deux Sad Trombone Boogaloo

2024-03-06

Wah Wah Wah

Between the time I wrote everything below and now my Beepy has died. So the what follows are my thoughts about using it and how it was working out...while it was still working. Unfortunately it is now a paperweight :(. We'll see what SQFMI has to say *IF* I can actually get ahold of anybody without a garbage proprietary social media account. This whole fiasco has me back to considering buying yet another old Palm PDA with a keyboard.

General Thoughts

I have settled in on a pretty good software setup for the Beepy now. I've switched over to using DietPi as the base OS as opposed to RPi OS lite because DietPi is significantly lighter. It uses 66% less RAM, CPU load is lower and boot time is significantly faster. My unscientific observation thus far is that the lighter resource usage is resulting in draining the battery a bit slower which is nice.

I'm slightly but not entirely surprised at how much I enjoy using this device and software setup I've kludged together. I am using it entirely offline except for when I do a quick hotsync with the USB ethernet adapter I leave on my desk. This downloads gemini and rss feed entries (thanks to offpunk) and weather forecast data. Other offline tools - have are a calculator/unit converter, notes and calendar.

While its a work in progress and certainly hacky I like the key elements of it as a whole. The keyboard is nice to type on. It feels good and is pretty easy to be accurate. The keyboard firmware does a great job of making all the functions you need available in a sensible way. I love the monochrome screen that looks amazing outside in the sunlight. Being offline is a welcome change of pace for me that adjusts how I think about using a computer in a good way.

MangoPi MQ Pro

The RISC V MangoPi SBC I ordered arrived last week and I spent a couple evenings trying various OS images on it and attempting to get it to work with the Beepy hardware. Alas, it was to no avail. It seems the current drivers for the Beepy keyboard and Sharp display are too tied to the Arm architecture and it will take someone much more capable in this arena than I to crack that nut. Disappointing for now but I knew that would be a likely scenario. The plus side is that I now have a very inexpensive, tiny and low ower RISC V SBC to fiddle with.

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