I grabbed a beepy a little while back (if interested BE ADVISED: they’ve since gone dark and left a bunch of people holding out for one, I got really lucky and ordered super early) so I could work on some python stuff on the go. I didn’t like having all the parts exposed, and the cases available seemed too flimsy for my liking.
I fired up blender and designed a unibody case for it. Printed it out on my Ender 3 and its been pretty great. I use it with some software I’m writing to turn a raspberry pi into a portable sensor data acquisition and visualization platform called a Picorder (Pi + Tricorder).
It took a couple revisions to get here, mostly to get the feel in the hand right. I wanted some bulbousness to make it easier to hold.
It’s designed so the PCB slides into it and is affixed by two screws, and then a top cap is secured with four more screws to protect the top.
I’ve been printing a couple years now and enclosures are still my favourite item to design and print. So satisfying to hold something in your hand that was once just a 3D model and is now a fully real object. I wanted to add some content here as I’ve enjoyed looking at the other posts!
I wish you all easy first layers and good prints!
The nostalgia tells me I’d love it.
My recollection of physical micro keyboards tells me my nostalgia is a dirty dirty liar.
For coding I almost prefer it?
I think we take for granted how much predictive magic is happening behind the scenes on capacitive touch keyboards like on smartphones. I often find coding on a smartphone kind of challenging because it starts autocorrecting natural language, but on this its pretty easy since its just what you type is what you get. Lots of mistakes still, but having modifier keys available is also helpful.
I’m not trying to say its great, its just… very fine? Very okay.
My last physical QWERTY phone was a Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G which I broke in like 2016, and I still miss it every day. Actually, that’s not true – I had a Blackberry Priv briefly afterwards, which was stolen. Even that was not a great phone, but the dinky keyboard it had make it miles more usable than the current glass bars of soap. Before all of this I had a Nokia N900 which was probably closest in concept to what you’ve got there. That phone ran Maemo Linux and could be a full function hacking tool complete with the entire 'Nix toolset and functional terminal, SSH client, VNC, the works.
Touch screens are absolute pants for typing. Just, utter flaming garbage. Anyone who claims otherwise just has Stockholm Syndrome and is desperately seeking post-hoc validation over not being offered the choice anymore.
I bought a Moto Z Play on the promise that there would be a keyboard Mod for it, which turned out to be vaporware. I’m still salty about that.