This LoRa-Linked Meshtastic Cyberdeck Repurposes an Old Clarinet Case as a Robust Housing
Designed for "slow communications," the build includes a custom keyboard marked out in Morse code.
Pseudonymous maker "owntheweb," hereafter simply Web, has turned a clarinet case into a cyberdeck designed with "slow communication" firmly in mind — using a Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer connected to a LoRa transceiver for mesh networking.
"I was collecting parts for quite some time for a rad cyberdeck," Web explains of the project. "It was going to have all the cool features as I build up on electronics skills. However, the collection of random parts kept growing (anyone else do this?) I even learned a lot from a friend on how to build a custom battery pack for this fictional beast. Then! I found a clarinet with case on sale for $8 in a pawn shop. It fit my keyboard perfectly and also at a low height (on the lid side anyway) so that I could type like normal without much oddness. Having an enclosure handy kept me honest and I scoped things down."
Inside the case, which makes a change from the traditional clamshell Pelican, is a custom mechanical keyboard with unusual keycaps: they're not marked out in Latin characters as you might expect, but in Morse code — highlighting, Web explains, the goal of the build: for low-speed, less-hectic communication than is typically offered by the modern web and its instant-messaging and social media services.
Elsewhere in the case is a full-color touchscreen display and an off-the-shelf USB Type-C battery pack — plus a clever hack to get it to supply the somewhat-unusual 5V at 5A required for proper operation of a Raspberry Pi 5. "I ran it through a USB-C [Power Delivery] trigger that requested the 18.5V [setting] as there were many PD options," Web explains. "I then ran it through a buck converter to 5V (and I'm still getting 5A as far as I can tell). It seems to run like a champ with everything at full blast and a benchmark running. It's charged via external power supply plugged into an exposed USB port in the battery directly."
For the communication side of things, the cyberdeck uses a LoRa transceiver to join the community-driven Meshtastic mesh network. "My favorite thing with this project so far has been sending a holiday greeting message and receiving a response from 45-ish miles away (four Meshtastic hops)," Web says. "It blew my mind."
More information is available in Web's Reddit post.