The Arquebus Cyberdeck Looks Ready to Take Its Raspberry Pi to the Field

Pseudonymous maker "anhedoniaclub" has designed a 3D-printed cyberdeck that looks like it's ready to take a Raspberry Pi to the field: meet the Arquebus.

"I hadn't done any proper 3D modelling in years so I modelled and 3D printed this Cyberdeck," anhedoniaclub writes of the project. Essentially it's a box just big enough to hold the keyboard (plus a few millimeters), and one more box to hold the other stuff in. Right now it runs Linux, I haven't decided what to actually do with it yet but it can do some light computing (1GB RAM)."

The build is based around the older Raspberry Pi 3 Model B single-board computer, which delivers just about enough computational grunt for a graphical desktop environment and a browser tab or two — with the main bone of contention being its 1GB of RAM, rather than its quad-core processor. It's connected to a Waveshare 7" screen over HDMI — "the screen's cover is not my own design," anhedoniaclub admits, "I only printed that part, and wrapped it with the carbon fiber wrap" — with a mechanical keyboard held firmly below.

To make it usable on-the-go, the 3D-printed housing includes an impressively-chunky 20,000mAh USB power bank — delivering, its creator says, "plenty of battery life." The use of the older Raspberry Pi 3 Model B helps here, too: while the Raspberry Pi 5 is considerably more powerful and available with up to 16GB of RAM, it's much more power-hungry and happiest with a still-relatively-rare USB Power Delivery compatible power supply capable of offering 5A at 5V.

More information is available in the project's Reddit post.