“This would have been so astoundingly amazing just 10 years ago…”. I say to my teenage son as I show him my new fan-dangled creation. “Why do you build things like this anyways?!” he says back half smiling and half serious. “I don’t know. It keeps me entertained while I’m in boring meetings at work.” was the best answer I could give him.

After playing around with the idea of building a keyboard for my iphone, I decided to make a better one. Admittedly what I really wanted to acoomplish with my iphone keyboard project was to have a dedicated blogging device. Something I could use in the dark while lying down, as one would do so, when writing a tech blog. It would be nice to have a physical keyboard; hopefully one that doesn’t suck as bad as the one I used on my iphone keyboard project.

Inspired by YARH.IO’s project that uses a slimmed down pi 3 with an awesome keyboard housing, I remixed it to work with my existing pi 4 case. I designed a back panel that extends to have a back plate where I can mount the pi 4. the back panel also has mounting holes from which I screwed in a buck converter and a dual 18650 battery holder.

Backplate design here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6505707

So, is it a better handheld blogging device? Absolutely not. The screen is too small, the resolution is too low, the battery life is not great but the keyboard is now perfect! 😂