you cant use this on any standardized test BECAUSE of the keyboard. but damn was it fancy. i heard you can program the geometric function to graph fractals. i opted for a ti89. almost as powerful and looks standard enough to not get hassled
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Since the 40 GPIO pins are broken out, there might be enough space in there to plugin an Arduino mini or RPi Pico board, and enable analog inputs and PWM outputs. Thinking of hooking up to control voltage based synthesizers.
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There’s also a couple other potential options like the Fasttracker 2 clone, Protracker clone, sunvox, maybe even ptcollab could run well enough, although i’m not sure how well would that trackball work for that
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As said somewhere else, sunvox may be a bit fiddly to use on a small screen (in height there) without a touch screen.
There is also MilkyTracker:
https://milkytracker.org
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They did already mention milkytracker.
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maybe adlibracker 2? it’s UI should work ok on such screen. I plan to start small with pico8 build in tracker
Glad to know so many cool softwares for music making. I am new to this area (I am more into physical synth, not software synth). Would anyone be kind to sum these up? Cheers.
yeah, since it seems like ive got time… i reached out and had them upgrade my order to the a0604… why not, right?
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I’d love to try using a devterm as a POS. I mean you can print receipts on it!
I’m not enthusiastic about POS’s, but using it for transactions at a swap meet or for a small fundraiser/community event would be fun. You could even collect email addresses and such on the spot. I’m not sure about CC processing, but something USB should work. Could even have a barcode scanner? -
Another use that nobody in this thread has mentioned is using the devterm for software defined radio. I am hardly experienced with this stuff, but with the devterm and a SDR stick or the Hackrf One I could have a lot of fun exploring different radio bands.
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It’s been suggested that the thermal printer can do sticker paper. I’d like to use it as a label printer if possible. I love labels.
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As others have mentioned: there’s a ton of potential as a music/synth/midi device.
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Designing a 4G/5G Ext board would be really cool. Imagine doing text messaging and taking phone calls through a terminal app. And ditch the smart phone!
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Getting GPS in here and connecting the board up to a vehichle’s OBDII port would be fun. The dev term can be vehicle diagnostics tool or navigation companion?
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How about a digital oscilloscope?! There’s already tons of software I for this stuff. The wide display is perfect. And the printer could be used for printing out snapshots!
I like that the TF card slot is easily accessible. I’d love to have different cards with images optimized for different devterm uses.
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Oh and one other thing:
- An offline wikipedia/reference browser. I love offline software. A compressed version of all of wikipedia can be just around 80GB! Easily can fit on a large sd card. With kiwix, aard, or something similar you could use the devterm as an offline research companion.
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the cheap square readers use a 4 barrel jack. im sure the square app for android could be emulated.
i think i recall some talk about SDR in the discord channel… that i may have been apart of… but im glad im not the only one think of this.
I’ve used the mini adafruit thermal printer to print my business deets on demand. i’ve also used these ondemand biz cards as 18650 wrappers as thery were perfectly sized.
I intend to wire up a passive buzzer to the gpio… it’s a fascination of mine… each of my RPi4s in my 6 node bramble have a buzzer wired up… and im playing with code to make a 6ch polyphonic beep code music thing…
I think this warrants an additional break as i think it’s a great counter query for the general forum
about a 4/5G ext board:
will the RPI3/4 series HATs be compatible with the CPI v3.14 via FPC adapter? Functionality of the DT will likely then match and exceed every other rpi compatible device instantly, likely with stuff we may already have that I do not think has been discussed before.
in relation to my previous revelation, You may already be considering using the PiScope project as I am no thinking about experimenting likewise.
I already have 2 credit card sized sd card holder/mangers for my cluster and im doing something similar already.
I want to thank you for a great post. It feels wonderful to see one who not just like minded but our curiosities seem to compliment. I love the infinite data of the net… but there are times i am grateful for my local backups. <3
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Glad to see your enthusiasm too!
Regarding buzzers, I was just looking at the schematics and noticed that audio out/speakers on the devterm are wired to the PWM gpio pins on the raspberry pi (GPIO12 and GPIO13). I guess this is how most pi’s do audio output. Then there are the DAC hats for hi-fi audio. And those seem to always use SPI. There seems to be at least one SPI routed to the ext board (used for the printer). So maybe we can see someone put together a hi-fi audio Ext board!
As far as compatibility with HATs, the schematics seem to indicate that the GPIO FPC maps the same 40 pins that are usually exposed on pis. Spot checking some of those pins, it looks like many of them are being used for various things like the bluetooth/wifi board. I guess you run into the same challenge from stacking HATs together where you get overlapping pin usage.
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Nothing fancy here:
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I hope to get more familiar with Linux just by messing with it (long time windows/dos user.)
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Want to emulate old computers on it, like the Amiga/C64 since its got a keyboard unlike the gameshell. A portable Amiga/DOS machine sounds amazing.
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Play my favorite roguelikes on it, like DCSS (which I managed to compiled last night, first time I compiled anything on Linux, it was a trial by fire I tell you.)
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Install x86 emulator on it to run my favorite roguelikes from windows/DOS as well.
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If ever I get bored enough, will setup retroarch on this device too, I got it installed and working, but the incentive isn’t high, since there are so many other devices that can run retroarch.
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Learn to program Pico 8 games.
I am really enjoying the size of the thing, Love the keyboard (yes its too small to touch type on, but it’s still very usable), its retro styling, decent performance, even the screen size is a good compromise. The battery life is decent and nothing a pair of spare batteries/portable battery pack won’t fix. Yes, its a bit of a toy, but its a really fun toy.
The only thing I would’ve added to it is a touch screen, that little mouse ball is not terrible but even with the sensitivity and acceleration turned to max, its still slow and make any apps that require the mouse a chore to use.
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just like what I am planning
+1
The DevTerm seems like a great excuse to learn Pico 8.
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Agreed!! I think it will hopefully be my coding playground where I can learn pico8 as well as some python, get back into java!! I’m hoping this will be convenient enough to tote around and still learn programming when Im out and about. I dont plan on writing or undertaking massive coding projects, but would much rather work through coding problems and tutorials on this rather than always reach for my phone and mindlessly wander the interwebs.
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Cyberpunk 2077
just kidding. Pico-8 and classic computer emulation would be my go-to’s as well
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Still searching for ideas while waiting for my order. But some of the things I’d like to try is connecting additional sensors to it (Inertial Measurement Unit, NFC, GPS, maybe cellular even?), or using it as a MIDI device somehow with some of my old samplers and drum machines.
i actually am thinking of using a DevTerm for Virtual Reality full body tracking with a camera and QR tags. camera → devterm → translation software → USB out → PC
that is cool. What peripheral are you adding?