i’m planning on using the uconsole, apart from other things, as a replacement for a smartphone (i use a dumbphone for most daily tasks and don’t always feel like carrying a computer with me, so this makes quite a bit of sense in my case).
i wanted to ask those that already have their device – how is your experience with using the machine outside? from what i’ve seen so far, i would be concerned with, say, getting it out of the bag on a rainy day or in the cold.
has anyone had experience with weatherproofing\ruggedizing their uconsole?
From my experience with some short casual use outside in the garden while its been cold and lightly raining, its pretty good and the body itself feels like it can take some bumps and a beating or 2, i would still take care not to expose it to heavy weather conditions and any drops but carrying around in a bag or something should be fine as long as you make sure to protect the screen, maybe just get a case for it, its roughly round the size of a dvd/bluray case so shouldnt be too hard to find something
I’ve used it in a light drizzle but like snoozer i would avoid anything beyond that, or even for more than a few seconds. ive fiddled with ruggedized milspec laptops before and the main approach they (used to, anyway, before slimming down) involves rubber gaskets on the inside of the chassis that are pushed together into a friction fit when the chassis closes. the uconsole seems like it would be amenable to that, doubly so since it’s passively cooled. the four major entry points for fluids would be the antenna cutout (easily mitigated by dremeling a hole or two for an SMA connector into the chassis and then plugging the hole, or printing/casting/CNCing a new chassis with the appropriate modifications), the display (just a regular gasket + a screen protector, ideally of hardened glass, maybe one that could be screwed or glued into the bevel?), the rim of each half of the shell (easily mitigated with, again, just a gasket), and the keyboard. the keyboard is the tricky part because you have many, many small holes with very little space to fit a gasket in. i anticipate something like the old model m sleeve covers could work, ala the industrial models, but that’s kind of clunky. given the iffiness of the stock keyboard i wouldn’t be surprised if a different version gets slapped together by the community in the future… but i digress. the other main points would be the ports and expansion slot, of course, but these could be water and dust proofed with either a door+gasket (unfeasible given small size in my opinion) or simple rubber plugs kept in place somehow that can be inserted and removed on the fly.
apologies for the rambly response, but that’s my bit. i would love to work on waterproofing mine down the line. as an interim solution, some glue along the obvious ingress points and tape where that isn’t viable should go a long way.