Enlarge / Messaging in the front, GPIO playground in the back (classic yellow/silver battery included, but not shown). (credit: Beepberry/Beeper/SQFMI)
Some people, for whatever reason, don't always love having their messages arrive on the same device that's also their bank, their news source, their subway fare, and their camera. For those people—and for those who just love a bizarre little computer—Eric Migicovsky has "a little side project" for you: Beepberry.
Beepberry is the fusion of a backlit BlackBerry Classic keyboard (with the logo button and all) and mini-touchpad, a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and a Sharp Memory LCD 400x240 screen—the kind of e-paper e-paper-like screen you'd commonly see on programming calculators. It's meant to be used with Beeper, the all-in-one chat service that can also relay SMS, including iMessage (typically through signing in to a Mac server remotely; more on that in Beeper's FAQ). It's available now for preorder for $99 if you want a Pi Zero W included and for $79 if you already have one you're willing to fuse in. You'll also need an SD card.
All the nifty stuff accessible on this $80/$100 devkit device. (credit: Beepberry/Beeper/SQFMI)
In a Twitter thread, Migicovsky, co-founder of Beeper and creator of the pioneering Pebble smartwatch, wrote that he wanted a "weekend device" that kept him in touch but didn't lead him into typical smartphone distractions. "I imagined a tiny, hackable e-paper screen with a physical keyboard, powered by a Raspberry Pi, useful to chat around my home…and pretty much nothing else," Migicovsky tweeted.
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