The one I was thinking about is the Alibaba/T-Head TH1520, and I expect some good open source support for it.
I wonder how feasible it would be to design a new face plate that has no game pad/button support, but instead uses the extra space to support a new keyboard module? Presumably, a keyboard module that sports more regular sized keys for serious programming/hacking?
Iād love to see an upgrade to the GameShell. Especially now that we have a variety of chipsets that could push the product up again to the big leagues. And especially Iād love to code for it.
A gameshell based on the v3.14 board with all its core modules would be amazing.
Talking of new hardware ideas, is there any downside to the CM4 adapter board vs if it was able to interface via its original (pcie?) connections to the clockworkpi rather than sodimm?
What Iām saying is that is there any merit in a new clockworkpi mainboard that supports the new connectors natively (with an adapter board for the sodimm cores)? Could new cores be produced to take advantage of the new connectors?
+1 for the full size (or x2?) Devterm, I personally originally thought it was that as well. With a sata interface for booting off a real drive
Aaaand, is it just me or do the knobs on the side scream that they should do something, like right knob scrolls, left knob goes forward/back? Configurable of course
Yes I know they are cosmetic for popping everything open quickly, but maybe some trickery with ledās and light sensors would do it?
I thought the same before I looked into it. I mean, the Playdate has done pretty well with its little crank handle thingā¦
Iād love to see an expansion module with a full-size Ethernet port. Most of what I want a tiny portable terminal for is connecting to things, and USB Ethernet dongles are nice and all, dongles suck.
Personally, Iām thinking of an expansion board with a built-in TAP. It would have two external Ethernet ports and an internal NIC all connected to a hub (not a switch). That would let you splice the DevTerm into a link somewhere and look at the packets, as well as a NIC connected to the same hub.
The other expansion port application I can see being useful would be a SATA controller, especially if it came with an onboard boost converter to provide a +5V/+12V SATA power connector. It would be really neat to be able to connect to external drives and diagnose/fix/exfiltrate things. (Again, you could use a dongle, but dongles suck.)
A device with a touch screen? Pretty pleaseā¦
Tochscreen? really? ā¦ Iām not saying ādonāt do thatā, but - but why would you want that?
There already are tablets, phones and even laptops/convertibles with keyboards+touchscreen - those already exist.
I think weāre here for āretroā-style stuff with actual physical keyboards, so a touchscreen doesnāt really make sense. Arenāt we?
Having said that, you can always try to fit a touchscreen yourself to the existing hardware.
Or do they? Iām not so sure unless you want to pay much more for something like Gemini PDA. I dig the retro styling but why arbitrarily limit the usefulness of a device by leaving out a feature just because the Tandy didnāt have it (or something like thatš).
For me it would be great to have it for some specific purposes (gamingā¦).
Most importantly though why not have it, how much would a touchscreen add to the BOM nowadays?
Looking at uconsole specs, I believe devterm could use some āupgradesā of sortsā¦
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new monitor with higher resolution: 1920x720 maybe?
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a new keyboard with backlight and game buttons omitted so that we get larger keyboard
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a new ext module that sports maybe another SD card slot or M.2 slot (with cooling fan still exist)
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a followup from the above point (this is wishful thinking), the ext module can connect to another battery module so that the devterm have 2x the battery life compared to now
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last but not least (unnecessary but I can dream), maybe a new shell for devterm thatās similar in look to the uconsole, along with metal front plating? I would gladly play for it! or at the very least, maybe an stl file for self printing.
honestly at this point, uconsole seems a better device than devterm in almost every way. At least with x2 battery life and more storage slot, devterm can be different than uconsole in a senseā¦
For Devterm, a real time clock module. At the very least put together a guide to gathering and making it work. This is my next project and I need to get ordering parts from Adafruit. Maybe you need to send Adafruit a few Devterm devices that they can use to make tutorials and cool hardware. Iād throw money in towards this if you want to crowd fund the expense, but I know a bunch of press units got sent out.
Iāll disagree with almost everyone hereā¦ Limiting my scope to the one machine I own (A06 Devterm), please make the OS as good as it possibly can be before branching out into other OS. And with this I mean Armbian. Part of the success of the RasPi is the OS, they spent a lot of time and money on making sure it works, and works well. If an alternative OS needs to be available, I would personally vote for a Kali/Armbian flavor, personally looking into this right now as I have needs for testing my network at work. I will also mention that I grabbed the latest OS from the Armbian website for my A06, and itās actually really good so far. I think working with them to help continue making Armbian the best it can be for these devices is a key step forward. Again, probably going against what most other people want, but I donāt see splitting resources into multiple directions until we have a solid base for new users to get started.
After that, a higher resolution screen would be most welcome! Constantly having menu windows fall below the bottom edge with no way to get to the apply button is a major let down! Once a user figures out how to make the windows scroll with some XFCE4 hot keys, life gets better, but still an issue.
Then more processors would be cool, like the new 8 core and maybe 8GB of RAM (heat may be too much). More modules would be cool too. Different keyboard, or at least key caps for other languages (as mentioned). The newer Risc-V processors with at least 4 cores would be a logical stepping stone to what is already available.
Finally Iāll say a getting started book, yes real printed dead trees in the box, just like many RasPi kits that you can get. Make it an optional sku so that those who want it can have it (first time users). Look at the book in the RasPi kits and make something similar. It would be worth an extra $35usd up to maybe an extra $50usd for some users, I might have opted for this when I bought mine. Yes my Pi400 came as a this type of kit, yes I also bought the first version of the RasPi user manual (Kindle version) because it had good info in there (never did buy a first model Pi though).
Everyone can now hate me if they wish, but I feel that the strength of the Pi has itās base in the fact that the developers spent so many resources making it decent throughout the years. Itās an investment in future models and having an orphaned OS right out of the start is no way to bring people in and keep them here. I was on this edge for a while, I havenāt used linux enough to say Iām a linux user. And this makes life hard. Yet fire up my Pi400 and I can at least use it like a real computer, something I really need to do more often.
Iām a bit late to this topic, but a high-performance risc-V core would be a must-buy for me.
NVMe M.2 2230 drive on the carrier board would make these little handhelds killer.
Not sure there is an easy way to do that with so much of the GPIO used for other functionality. Maybe a USB SATA controller on a card and a ribbon that can go to a 2280 SATA SSD?
Yea youāre right, would have to be like a M.2 SATA 2242 or 2280 SSD
Your products are already really impressive. I would love for you guys to make the best home server for tech enthusiasts.
Iām actually really delighted with the R01. I expected it to be fun, but itās very usable and runs super cool and itās kind of astonishing how well-supported the chip is: everything compiles cleanly, no strange crashes. I was able to get Slackware installed and it works great for daily use.
A RISC-V board with a little more RAM and a few more cores would be an amazing addition for the DevTerm and the uConsole.