Very similar to both this and the UPS DIAD 6, but I’m shooting for a square display and 6 21700 lion cells in 3s2p configuration. I want a lab/field/comms device at the end of it.
Warning, its about to get kinda rant-like:
I think the general size of the uconsole is good but my keyboard metric is really the key sizing and spacing of an ipad mini in portrait mode, and modular is better. Lora or nrf24 radios are kind of a must due to my personal uses, but I figure I can just make the entire back plate of the chassis swappable and still screw mounted to avoid the issues of the pinephone’s back plate system. I also think that the GPIO implementation on something like the uconsole being a ZIF connector is a bit of a bad choice in terms of ergonomics. Also, being portable and having that much of a bottleneck on power output is normal but not needed or much cheaper than designing the power electronics to provide high wattage. And, also, the fact that they are just ignoring the exposed PCIe lanes breaks my NVME starved heart.
The back choice being metal is cool, but is bad for antenna performance and having it exposed is kinda wild. Ultimately there isn’t much stopping the connectors from being mounted diagonally in a gameboy cartridge like position. Having game buttons but not throwing back buttons and one accompanying joystick is easily fixable. The CM4 connector for the SOM is pretty nice and should probably be the go-to (I really like the SoQuartz line). There should be a sensor array module that is easily switchable for barcode scanners, sensors, cameras, whatever (on a slip ring) so that the device can be used effectively in commercial, industrial, or whatever environments to its full edge computing potential. The SoCs available on the market today are filled with various asics to accelerate almost any application for this use case and instead, it’s used for the hyper consumption of evermore personally-esoteric media???
And… if it is gonna be a building it yourself type of experience, the files are coming in a flash drive in the box for literally every part of the device. Every manual that is legally allowed (some companies are weird), every model file, schematic, literally everything. I can’t stand not having the ability to repair whatever device that I have in hand.
Oh, and telescopic antennas need to come back. So UFL->BNC(male) off of all transceivers. I think triaxial BNCs are a little rare though, so I’m either trying to keep MIMO setups out of the device or I’ll cave and just do a PCB based MIMO setup. When this is eventually a thing, I highly suggest having a good resin printer for replacement part accuracy.
It doesn’t look like the cost for the whole system is gonna be too bad at the end of it, but quite literally have big pockets or be ready for a shoulder strap.
You definitely don’t need this aggravation.
