• 18 Posts
  • 91 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • Ooh, I haven’t tried RTL-SDR on it yet, but I think I’m nearing capacity on what it can do at once lol.

    Here’s the block diagram for it (in spoiler below). Everything’s up and running except the Bluetooth Receiver -> Snapcast (it works on the bench but I don’t have the scripting/automation done yet). I’m also adding an SMA connector for an external antenna, but the new base part is still printing. Photo shows it “as is” of this writing.

    SSL for the web apps was a PITA since I wanted real certs. Had to make a wildcard domain under my main hobby domain, so all my apps are like “https://{APP_NAME}.mobile.mydomain.xyz/”

    As soon as I can get the Bluetooth + Pulseaudio scripting done, I’m gonna try to do a write up and maybe a show/tell post.

    Block Diagram

    Current Case


  • I would love to have a small Wikipedia browser that can survive the apocalypse.

    I’ve got the full 120 GB Wikipedia dump running in Kiwix on a Raspberry Pi Zero. Works great (surprisingly)

    E-ink display, mini keyboard

    Have been using a Minimal Phone for a few months now which has both of those. Can connect to the Pi easily.

    multiple ways/ports to transfer info,

    Add a USB-C hub (or add a hub to the Pi) and you’re set

    All wrapped up in a heavy duty equipment case that’s able to survive a building collapses and burns in an earthquake, that’s shielded from EMP.

    And that’s where I’m limited - My 3D printer can only do so much lol. 😆

    I’ve been working on a side project this week with a Orange Pi Zero 2W (Pi Zero “clone” but with better specs). It’s got the Kiwix+Wikipedia like my older Pi (described above) plus a bunch of other neat stuff. It’s kind of a combination travel router, portable web app server, party box, and extremely over-engineered bluetooth speaker all-in-one. Hoping to put together a show-and-tell post about it when I get the last of it squared away.












  • I do wonder what the refresh rate is like on these. I’ve been daily driving a Minimal Phone for a few months now. While I like it, it definitely took some getting used to. While it’s actually quite snappy, it feels abysmally slow even compared to the Cat S22 Flip it replaced (which is a low-end Android smartphone in a flip phone form factor).

    I also wonder why they bothered with a camera on it. The camera on the Minimal is extremely “meh”, but the thing that makes it mostly useless is the refresh rate of the e-ink. You never know if you got a blurry mess of a picture or what. The firmware will put the screen into “fast refresh / low fidelity” mode to try to improve it, but it’s still a roll of the dice when trying to take any kind of photo. About the only thing it’s good for is scanning QR codes.