benbrown's uConsole stuff

What is a uConsole?

The ClockworkPi uConsole is a kit computer based on Raspberry Pi that takes the form of a hand-held device with a screen, keyboard and game controller. It is a full computer that can run Linux and other operating systems and full desktop applications, as well as a whole host of of programming tools and internet applications.

I found out about it originally by surfing pictures of "cyberdecks" on Pinterest. It definitely has that vibe.

↯ I collect uConsole-related resources on my bookmarks site.

First impressions

I ordered my uConsole in November of '23. I received no word about it for 10 months. I would occasionally check out the forum where there is a lot of information being shared by anxious people waiting for a shipping notice. I tried not to worry about it. Then one day in August of '24, I got word that it was shipping. 3 days later it arrived.

The kit was fun to put together. It pretty much just snaps together and with a few screws, you've got a new computer. It reminded me of building a PC when I was a kid, except on a much tinier scale. The case is metal. It is all very sturdy feeling. It booted up on the first try, but I took it apart a few times to make some tiny adjustments to the keyboard and the trackpad.

But it boots right up into a desktop linux environment, and you can open up a browser or a terminal and get to it!

My Experience

This is a fun little computer! It is fun to tinker with and a great little hacker's companion. Since it runs full linux and you can run local development tools, apps, networking tools. I end up SSHing from my laptop into it also, to do package updates or install new stuff. It is easier to copy paste stuff from a real computer.

The keyboard and trackpad are not great, but usable. The fact that it also has a game controller d-pad and abxy buttons is really nice. I installed Retro Pie and ScummVM and cncnet and Dreamm

One of my favorite things right now is to connect my meshtastic radio to the usb port and use the hosted client to connect to the local mesh. This is so much cooler than doing it on a phone, if you, like me, understand the definition of cooler to mean "heavier, with more wires, and involving several arcane input modalities."

In fact, my deck has become my preferred LAND NODE INTERFACE when sending my AIR NODE up on the drone, partially because my phone is busy driving the drone, but mostly because it is cyberpunk as fuck.

I found a perfectly-sized pouch at DAISO. I added some velcro to hold a patch, and hooked it onto a dsptch utility sling.

Mods

Installed an updated OS on a much bigger SD card. I went for a 128 - I should have done the 256 because that would give me more room for fancier game ROMs. This custom build of the OS is from a helpful forum member - not the most reliable way to get OS updates in the future. Hopefully it will be easy to maintain an up-to-date OS as we move forward since most of the stuff is standard Raspberry Pi.

Note that had I not installed that OS, I would have made this scary seeming battery charging change. In fact I did make this change manually and verified that it does indeed charge faster and has not caused any issues. This change is included in the custom OS build linked above.

I replaced the stock trackball component with a new one. The component is a tiny little square with a rolling ball in it. It sits gently on a socket in the keyboard chip. The one that came in my kit made a weird crunchy sound and didn't roll smoothly. I could not reliably make the pointer go up. So I bought a 5 pack of replacement trackballs. They shipped in about a week from China and I popped in the replacement and performance was immediately much better. Still not a magic trackpad or anything, but at least it moves in all right directions.

Flash the keyboard firmware. Amongst other things, this enables you to scroll with the trackball when pressing the fn button which is great.

I followed these instructions to calibrate the battery indicator.

Installed Retro Pie. This required a bit of tinkering. I added made these configuration changes to get the game buttons working in the menu. After I got those working in the main menu UI, they still didn't work when I launched a game. I had to manually remap those keys again in RetroArch.

Should I buy one?

Do you like weird computers? Are you ready to reinstall linux for fun? Do you enjoy reading forums and searching for tips that you didn't know you would ever care about finding but now need to obsessively collect and document? Do you want to serve web pages from your backpack? Do you need to update firmware on tiny embedded devices while crouching on a rooftop? This may be the device for you. Unless you are in a hurry, because you will wait months to get it.