A couple weeks ago, Brooke and I crammed our lives into a rented van and launched
into a two-thousand-mile journey from New York City to Colorado.
[Road noise]
Bridge! Duck!
[Road noise]
As we hurtled into the setting sun, I could feel that big city smog giving way to blue skies,
crisp mountain air, and a fresh new outlook on life.
But I was wrong.
We now live, you see... in the suburbs.
To beat back this desolate cyberpunk wasteland and pry its consumerist fingers off my soul,
I've developed a weapon of pure creativity - a cyberdeck. Ladies, gentlemen, cyborgs,
say hello to the Voidstar Data Blaster, and welcome... to Voidstar Lab West.
[Song:] I'm a cop... from the future.
I am Zack Freedman, high-altitude cybernetic suburbanite, and this is the Voidstar Data
Blaster. I've taken this Raspberry Pi 400 and souped it up with a detachable wearable display,
battery handles, an SDR receiver, and a goddamn antenna! In fiction, the cyberdeck
is the trademark battlestation of console cowboy anti-heroes running nets through cyberspace,
but what makes a real-life cyberdeck depends on who you ask. The cyberdeck subreddit
says "it's basically a laptop computer, but using an HMD or neural interface."
Cyberdeck Cafe says they're "artisan crafted computers made in the cyberpunk aesthetic."
The Cyberdeck Discord says... I don't actually know what they say, because every time I log
in I get distracted for hours. You should totally join the Cyberdeck Discord. Also,
join the Voidstar Lab Discord... even us cyborgs crave human interaction.
I decided this cyberdeck needed four things: One, it needs handles so I can lug the deck
where the action is, and jack in without sitting down. It's always easier to jack in one-handed.
Number two: It needs a full-size physical keyboard, but it can't fold up. If it's
got a touch keyboard, it's a tablet. If it's got a hinge, it's a laptop.
Number three: It needs cyberpunk features. Brain computer interfaces are bogus - fight
me - so that means it needs a head-mounted display and some cyber-snooping-ready SDR.
Why is it called the Data Blaster? Well,
it ended up looking kind of like an old-school ghetto blaster, except... data.
Some of you may ask what I'm going to do with the cyberdeck, and that is an excellent question.
This is the first project I built at my new workshop which TOTALLY RULES. Voidstar Lab
West is almost as big as my entire old apartment, and has tons of tools and toys
that just couldn't fit into the Fab Lab. I also added a 3d print farm humidor room!
I'm giving my Patrons an exclusive tour, so if you want to see the new and improved Voidstar Lab,
and support future projects like this one, head to patreon.com/zackfreedman.
The heart of this project is the Raspberry Pi 400, which is basically a Raspberry Pi 4 in a keyboard.
The Pi 400 is perfect for cyberdecking because it's a slim computer and a slim keyboard,
and all the ports are on the same side so there are fewer cables to run. The Pi 400 uses the
same chip as the 4GB Pi 4, but it actually runs both faster and cooler. It's science, look it up.
I ordered this 1280x480 touchscreen from Aliexpress. 1280x480 sounds like I'm saying
something wrong, but think of it like two 640x480 displays in one. The display is sensibly short,
but still comfortably holds two terminal windows side-by-side, or one 1337 h4xz0r
split terminal. I have no idea what this script is doing, but it looks SICK!!
But no cyberdeck is complete without a way to wire your head into the Matrix,
so allow me to introduce the Vufine. Unlike my Optigon wearable teleprompter, the Vufine is
just a display, no computer, which is perfect because it's attached to a computer! This is
literally a second monitor. I can drag anything from the main display to the Vufine, and even
use both at once. The Vufine doesn't permanently attach to glasses - it's held on by a magnetic
mount - so I can detach it from my face and stash it on a dock on the deck. On... on the deck dock.
The Pi 400 succs 500mA doing literally nothing, and it can draw over one and a
half amps when it's feeling frisky. I bought a chunky 20AH USB bank to give it plenty of juice;
it's a fancy one with, like, a solar panel for off-the-grid fun. Don't get too attached to it,
though; this story does not have a happy ending.
You see, I was supposed to design a circuit board for the Data Blaster, but dragging 200
boxes of crap through two time zones turns out to be kind of distracting. This week's episode
is sponsored by NextPCB, the quick-turn circuit board prototype manufacturer. Even with NextPCB's
four-day turnaround and 24-hour shipping, I just could not finish this project before we left New
York. With prices this low and service this fast, prototyping straight to PCB is a no-brainer...
says the guy who just proved he had he has no brain. Had I made boards, I would also be able to
refine my design with NextDFM, their free Gerber analysis tool! Not only does this visualize the
Gerbers that you're about to fab, it also scans them for hidden dangers and risky elements that
can trash your budget and smash your schedule. NextDFM also lets you panelize your boards, which
is a super useful feature that's missing from *cough* EAGLE *cough* popular board editors *cough
KiCad cough* No matter what you're building, no matter what software you're using, and no matter
where you're having them made, NextDFM can boost your odds of crushing your design on the first
try. Links are in the description, and every board you order supports Voidstar Lab.
I started by modeling the Raspberry Pi 400, and then I designed a home for each part. I constantly
printed these little test slices to make sure all my dimensions were right. You can see that some
of these took a few tries, so thank Satan that we have Micro Center in Denver so I could buy
more filament. I have got to stop name-dropping Micro Center. The trickiest part was getting the
wearable display dock - its sexy curves made it basically impossible to measure, and I had to
design the dock mostly by trial and error. You can see that I originally intended to make the Data
Blaster white to match the Pi, but this was a big mistake - everyone knows that everything cyberpunk
has to be black, which is why the most cyberpunk of all the cookware is the cast-iron skillet.
Next task is the battery handles. Before we build, we must destroy. Its equivalent exchange, baby!
I'm gonna pull the lithium-ion cells out of this power bank and then rearrange them
into the handles, except wait, this USB battery pack doesn't HAVE cells.
It's got LiPo packs. Well, if only I had made my own power board. All I have is my
daily-driver USB power bank and I need that for my portable soldering iron.
At least I needed it for my portable soldering iron.
Hey, kids! Soldering to batteries is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! These things can start a house fire,
so make sure you do this project before you get too attached to your house.
So I bought this extra-flexible 18ga wire from Amazon, and I added a slot in these segments
to route it, but when I started soldering, this weird black crud started boiling up and
ruining my joints. This was odd, because this usually happens when there's padding or enamel
or some other additive on the wire, but this is all copper...
wait a second... why is the cut end silver instead of, you know, copper-colored? Well,
this isn't copper wire at all! Each strand is aluminum wire painted to LOOK like copper wire,
so this wire is worthless! I'm gonna find out who did this, I'm gonna go to their house,
I'm gonna wait till they're showering, I'm gonna sprinkle Legos all over their floor.
Here's how this thing comes together. In front, we have a faceplate,
which has the heads-up display dock and has a frame to stick the display to - it has, like,
some double-sided adhesive on it. Everything is covered in ads nowadays - I mean in our
cyberpunk future - so I printed some fake logo badges. The PCB from the power bank is mounted
in the middle layer. The back has some fancy flair, for which I forgot to focus the camera,
and some integrated pegs to wind up the wearable display's cable.
You have to do a little loop-de-loop at the end...
Next step, figure out the wiring. These ribbon cables are the thinnest available,
but I'm limited on how aggressively I can bend them, because if they crease, they break.
Figuring out a combination of ports and parts that minimize the wiring
was by far the hardest part of the project, and I really should have just... integrated all these
into one board. This is a double pain in the ass - that's right, a pain in two asses - because the
ZIF sockets are super-duper fragile, and even a tiny bit too much force will snap this tab off.
Wait, I need this one for the project! Pissfiddles!
The power bank's charging port and power button are now buried inside the dec,k so I added an
extension cable and a fancy light-up button. The battery handles mount to the back plate, and
over here is the charging indicator from the power bank PCB. I added some light pipes made
of 3D-printer filament, and the blue LED's make the filament fluoresce! For the finishing touch,
I added a Nooelec NESDR Nano 3, a super-small software-defined radio. An SDR is sort of like
an AM, FM, CB, TV, basically super-high-bandwidth receiver with tuning electronics to let you use
SOFTWARE to DEFINE what RADIO signals you pick up! I can still use this to sweep for bugs,
debug wireless gizmos, and make cool-looking waterfall plots! Nothing says cyberpunk
like sniffing and demodulating every radio signal in the immediate vicinity
with a collapsible aerial. Finally, let's get ahead of the memelords.
Not only does the data blaster play Doom, it plays Doom on a wearable display.
I'll be honest, I built this thing for the cool factor, but it turned out to actually be really
useful. It's easy to carry, and it's a, you know, fully loaded desktop computer with, like,
Linux. The battery life is bananas; this thing draws like 600mA from the batteries,
so with over 20AH in the tank, this thing could run for like 30 straight hours.
I left the GPIO, USB ports, and Ethernet open so I can hook anything up. The Data Blaster has
immediately become my dedicated go-anywhere do-anything field computer,
and now that I'm in Colorado where we actually HAVE fields, you're going to see a lot more of it!
If you want to build your own, I did not have the time to take pictures
for the how-to guide and now it's fused together with epoxy, so you're screwed!
I did put the printable STL files in the bill of materials in the description.
It's not terribly difficult to figure out how to make it, but... uh... sorry!
In the future, I do plan to revisit this project and make a version that's better-documented,
you know, not permanently glued together, and of course, loaded with custom circuit boards from our
sponsor NextPCB... assuming they don't fire me for not actually using their product in their video.
Subscribe if you want to see that! Not me getting fired, the cyberdeck.
This project was made possible by my hyper-generous patrons filling up the parts fund!
If you've got the means and you want to see more spicy projects, hit the thing
right up over there. Your support makes a colossal difference. Our super-cyberpunk Co-Lab-Orators are
cmd and I'm noT Betta Core! I've implanted their names somewhere in this episode, so
go trace their uplinks. Our augmentedly awesome lab assistants are: Tech Daddy, Taranach,
C. Harris, Robert Berriz, salthy, Roger Pincombe, TheANTIFA, Azundo, Gregory Jones, James Barry,
Bill Schuller, Brian Santero, Michael Dunn, good succ, Jason, Olivier Yiptong, Accalia,
Varka, Cyrus Draegur, powerful_cch, Anthony Mincarelli, Sir Derpington of Derptopia,
Zanforian, Andrew Paton, But by far the biggest thankyou to my overlord and savour the one person
who I really wouldnt be here without, Oh I'm sorry, looks like it got cut off.
Just kidding, William Overton!, and Daniel Cadwell. I'm glad the guy from the last episode
who was calling for help via Patreon username got rescued... although maybe he died. Anyways,
thanks to Brooke the greatest road tripper in the West, and to our Discord mods,
MyFairJulie, Billie Ruben, and Techniack, who held down the fort during our voyage.
Billie has been streaming regularly on her own channel, and it is dee-lightful,
so go check that out. But wait! One final thanks to bootdsc, the hack maniac who basically made the
entire cyberdeck community happen. He invited me to the Cyberdeck Virtucon a few weeks ago,
and we chatted about DIY wearables, we got Doom Eternal running on a heads-up display,
and I spilled prosecco in my lap about three minutes after the camera started
rolling and I had to keep a poker face! Link is in the description. Like, comment, subscribe,
follow me everywhere, and keep on hacking. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the future