Cyberdeck Cyberwhat Selfhosted VPN networks and is Wireguard Hard
Ep. 13

Cyberdeck Cyberwhat Selfhosted VPN networks and is Wireguard Hard

SF, CA

Episode description

(00:00)

Complete Shownotes at https://discuss.james.network

(00:40)

Sponsor

Ameridroid referral link - US-based distributor of Odroid, Open Hardware and Home Automation

(02:01)

State of the Podcast

Albyhub as a selfhosted Bitcoin Lightning node. Locally hosts wallet and node for podcasting 2.0 donations + Nostr authentication.

(02:44)

Nostr decentralized social network.

(04:38)

Events

(06:40)

Self-hosted Tools

Is Wireguard hard to use? Send your thoughts on an anonymous form.

Adding authentication services onto Wireguard, specifically ones you can selfhost, and run on a cheap VPS:

  • Racknerd Referral link, and select “Reveal Deals” for VPS annual subscriptions at $11. They are friendly bunch with a great reputation; Pangolin recommends them. Minimal VPS is all that is needed for these sorts of services, which are merely providing your authentication, as opposed to the actual wireguard traffic. Limited locations:
    • Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle
    • Chicago, Dallas, New York, Ashburn
    • Strasborg France
    • Toronto, Canada
    • Asia recommended to use DC-02 out of Los Angeles

(07:47)

  • Netbird - Connect your devices into a secure WireGuard®-based overlay network with SSO, MFA and granular access controls.
    • You can try their hosted service or selfhost it, or whatever. Check out
  • Pangolin - is a self-hosted tunneled reverse proxy server with identity and context aware access control, designed to easily expose and protect applications running anywhere. Pangolin acts as a central hub and connects isolated networks — even those behind restrictive firewalls — through encrypted tunnels, enabling easy access to remote services without opening ports or requiring a VPN.
    • Combines traefik reverse proxy with Single Sign On and Wireguard. Meant to be selfhosted, but they do offer a hosted instance.
    • Pin codes, temporary links, password links for exposing services as a “funnel”. Similar to cloudflare tunnels, where users cannot be bothered to sort things out and just want a service exposed.
  • Headscale - The main objective of Headscale is to provide a non-proprietary implementation of the Tailscale protocol & control server for hobbyists and self-hosters. Acts as a replacement for the listening servers while allowing you to continue using your existing clients applications. Funnel functionality is currently considered in beta status. Does not include a web ui by default.

(14:15)

Self-hosted Tools for when your Nextcloud server goes offline

Syncthing - peer-to-peer file synchronization utility, designed to sync files between devices on a local network or between remote devices over the Internet. Note: Syncthing project does not directly support Apple Store or Google Play store for mobile.

  • Syncthing-fork for Android. Available through Github or F-Droid
  • Moebius Sync for iOS. Paid app.
  • FileStash - webui designed to sit on top of your own sync service, Git, Google Drive, Database, S3, etc. Now supports arm devices!
  • FileBrowser webui
  • SFTPGo webui with multi-user and group support!

Ways to support the show!

(20:01)

You into Cyberdecks, bro?

Cyberdore 2064 - 3D print yourself, with Pi Zero and Pi Pico. Looks like a blackberry / cell phone / palm pilot.

What is a Cyberdeck - A cyberdeck is a portable computing device often associated with the cyberpunk genre, typically used by hackers or “Netrunners” to access and navigate virtual networks.

Cyberdeck hat from Adafruit $9 and still requires a 3.5“ style touch or non-touch display for another $35. Angled to not be awkward on existing GPIO port in back.

Cyberdeck Bonnet $8 and a $20 e-ink display or small OLED. Allows a couple pins additional GPIO access. Size of the Pi Zero / GPIO port.

Pi 400 - $66. Another $20 for the accessories: mouse, power supply, SD Card. Awkward GPIO access requires expander, similar to Cyberdeck or Bonnet. No camera or Touchscreen cable connector. Improved thermals over Pi 4!

  • 4gb ram is lame if using this with a web browser watching videos.
  • Functions as a bluetooth keyboard, as do the other models!

pi400kb - Use the Pi 400 or 500 as an actual HID USB Keyboard on your existing computer. Will likely require a USB-C splitter to allow power for the device while it acts as your USB keyboard

OrthoPi - Convert Pi 400 to mechanical yourself with a ~$20 gerber board that supports a rotary encoder.

Pi 500 lowered heat produced. Regular keyboard. 8gb ram. $90. $30 for accessories.

Pi 500 + w/ Gateron switches. RGB lighting. m.2 slot. Includes 256gb nvme at $200. $30 for accessories, probably worth it for 5 amp power.

Is this actually comfortable to type on? Chiclets are ultimate low profile. Raised keys are angled… so, does this thicker keyboard feels uncomfortable?

(30:00)

Keybow 2040 by Pimoroni. Pi Pico RGB-lit mechanical 12-key. Python programmed over usb.

(31:00)

Dell SK-8115. Turn up at Goodwill. $12 - 20 on ebay. - Bomb-proof, raised keys, and made for decades of abuse. $59.99 retail.

Download transcript (.srt)
0:00

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

0:02

Linux prepper.

0:04

Welcome back to Linux Prepper.

0:07

I'm trying things a little different today.

0:08

I decided to try recording outside for a change.

0:11

So you may hear the sounds of nature

0:14

or a squeaky chair or a car driving by or a bird or whatever,

0:19

but we'll give it a go.

0:20

So yeah, welcome back to episode 13

0:22

of the Linux Prepper podcast. Linux Prepper, of course, is a self-hosted show about us trying to do everything we can

0:30

ourselves using fully open source hardware and software.

0:34

It's all about just trying it.

0:36

And if we fail, it's okay.

0:38

No judgment.

0:39

It's just about seeing how far we can go.

0:43

Also want to take a quick moment to thank my sponsor.

0:46

My sponsor for the show is, of course, Ameradroid.

0:49

That's Ameradroid.com, the US-based distributor

0:51

of single-board computers and things for home automation.

0:55

I would say most famously, hard kernel

0:57

and their O-Droid series.

0:59

But I noticed that they've also started offering

1:01

third-reality devices.

1:03

They're like Zigbee matter controllers.

1:05

They have a power management switch,

1:07

which I use all the time.

1:09

I've been buying third reality stuff

1:11

over a period of years from various places,

1:14

but I'm happy to see them selling third reality.

1:16

I've never had a problem with them,

1:18

but they have basically a wall plug,

1:20

which you can then control over Zigbee.

1:22

But the thing I like about the wall plug

1:24

is it still has a physical button on it

1:26

to turn it on and off.

1:27

And it has a little ring light

1:29

so you can see if it's on or off.

1:31

And I use those all the time

1:33

just for turning off different devices in my home.

1:35

So I can definitely recommend them.

1:37

It's like 15 bucks.

1:38

And yeah, I have about a dozen.

1:41

So I definitely like them.

1:43

Been running them for probably three years.

1:45

But I'll leave a link for Maradroid and their third reality device. They have tons of customer

1:50

service options and shipping options all over the world. It's much easier than shipping

1:54

directly overseas. So check out Maradroid.com and thank you to them for sponsoring the

1:59

next Prepper podcast. That said, let's give a quick state of the podcast. It was recently

2:04

brought to my attention that the podcasting 2.0 support wasn't there for

2:07

this show.

2:08

So I have now put up my own self-hosted Albie Hub node.

2:15

That is a self-hosted lightning node that allows people to send lightning donations to

2:21

the show.

2:22

So that is now working.

2:23

And I want to thank the people who sent me in little messages and donations through podcasting 2.0, just in the last couple days of it running. I appreciate that a lot.

2:32

And thanks for telling me that it wasn't running properly. It's all good to go now. As part of that too, I have started having a presence on noster. Noster is a decentralized tool that also uses lightning nodes to basically

2:51

allow people to run their own relays of messages between each other and kind of have this,

2:58

you know, fully open source decentralized tool built around cryptocurrency. Whether that's something that interests you or not is, I don't know, but I mean, I can do it,

3:10

so I might as well try it. I think it's, you know, it's worth at least checking out. So it's there.

3:16

And feel free to interact me on it and kind of continue to see how it goes. If you're curious

3:21

about Noster and you want to try it, I recommend looking at the web

3:25

client tool called iris.2.

3:28

I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but you can create an account on iris.2.

3:34

You can also plug that account into your own node wallet that you run yourself using something

3:40

like Albiehub, which is what I'm running.

3:42

I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.

3:45

And you're welcome to get yourself set up on an AlbiHub node.

3:48

The good news is it's easy to run on a Raspberry Pi-styled

3:52

device or in Docker or similar.

3:55

And you can just basically spin it up wherever you prefer

3:58

to run it, and you don't need to do any kind of port forwarding

4:00

or anything, which is nice.

4:02

So nothing stops you from accessing it over a VPN.

4:06

And you'll be able to make the transaction data you need

4:09

without having to actually expose anything

4:11

to the broader internet.

4:14

The only caveat of running your own node,

4:16

if this does interest you,

4:17

is you'll need to keep it online.

4:19

So if you're running on a Pi and it goes offline,

4:21

it's not gonna work.

4:23

So that's just is what it is,

4:24

but self-hosting is self- to work. So that's just is what it is. But you know,

4:25

self-hosting is self-hosting. So if that interests you, I'll leave a link for Albie Hub,

4:30

but so far so good. It's worked fine. Coming up, I will be at Segal. That's going to be

4:37

November 7th and 8th. I'll be tabling for this show. And I have some printed goodies that I'll be offering

4:45

there. This includes buttons and shirts and some other fun

4:49

things I had collaged a little display that I'll be having

4:52

there. And if you want to come and see it in person, you can

4:55

also be giving a presentation as part of Seagull. This is the

5:00

Seattle GNU Linux conference on all things fully open source

5:04

at the University

5:05

of Washington on November 7th at 5pm and I'll be giving a presentation on how I make physical

5:12

theater performances using open source tooling.

5:15

And I think it'll be really fun to show people things like I'm guessing I'll probably be

5:21

presenting a laser cut shadow puppetry that I put together as well as

5:26

Pantomime variations of the same kind of thing that I've done when I didn't have access to the shadow puppets

5:32

I just use my body and

5:34

Other iterations of the same kind of things

5:36

So I think it'll be a very exciting and fun and totally unique

5:41

Presentation it'll be the first time I've given

5:44

presentation about my theater shows time I've given presentation

5:45

about my theater shows, which I've been making for,

5:48

I don't know, a decade plus and touring.

5:52

So yeah, you can look forward to that.

5:54

I'll leave a link to the event and the show notes.

5:56

I will not be streaming it online.

5:58

This is my original material that I make

6:01

and it's, I don't wanna present it in any way

6:04

that I don't feel it is good enough. And so live stream, I don't want to present it in any way that I don't feel it is good

6:06

enough. And so live stream, I don't trust, which means it's going to be in person only.

6:10

Sorry about that. But you'll have to be there in person if you want to see it. But it'll

6:14

be the first time I've given this sort of presentation about the work. And so I'm excited

6:19

about that. But that'll be fun. That's coming up. And this issue will be talking about Cyber Decks and the new PI 500+

6:28

in addition to the previous iterations and kind of asking like,

6:32

"Who are these things for?"

6:34

And, uh, because I don't know.

6:38

But I think it's interesting.

6:39

I also wanted to take a moment to shout out some self-hosted tools

6:44

that I think are interesting for

6:45

people wanting to run their own VPN because it raises a question in my mind. Let's talk about

6:51

self-hosted tooling for a second specifically to access your own local services. So things like

6:57

the aforementioned Albi Hub. If you're going to run your own note of something and access it over a VPN.

7:07

Is WireGuard actually hard to use?

7:10

This is an open question. I want people to write into the show,

7:12

tell me, is WireGuard hard to use?

7:15

And I don't know, maybe, you know,

7:17

our experiences are colored or whatever,

7:18

I'm sure they are, but it's like,

7:20

'cause you use something you get used to it

7:22

and it's like not a big deal, you know?

7:23

You're just like, yeah, this is great.

7:25

But is WireGuard hard?

7:27

Like, for real?

7:29

When you use it, or you're like, oh, this is so hard.

7:32

Yeah, let me know.

7:34

Because there's all these spin-offs, right?

7:36

These authentication services built on top of WireGuard,

7:39

and I wanted to give a shout out to some

7:42

specific ones that are self-hosted.

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And let me start by going, let's see, we'll start with NetBird.

7:51

So what is NetBird?

7:53

They describe themselves as NetBird allows you to connect your devices into a secure,

7:57

wire guard based overlay network with single sign on multi-factor authentication and granular

8:02

access control.

8:05

So you can actually use Netbird through them, just as you would, tail scale, it's like exact

8:12

same kind of thing for a hundred devices or whatever.

8:16

It's a hosted service, but they also allow you to self-host every aspect of Netbird.

8:21

So if you want, you can transition from hosted to self-hosted or whatever.

8:26

And it's easy to check out. And the fact that it's entirely self-hostable by default in every

8:32

aspect is very appealing to me. So I want to shout it out on the show. Similar to in that vein

8:40

is head scale. Head scale. What is head scale? That main objective of head scale is to provide

8:46

a corrected implementation of the tail scale protocol

8:49

and control server for hobbyists and self-hosters

8:52

to run themselves.

8:53

This acts as a replacement for the tail scale

8:56

listening servers.

8:57

It allows you to continue using your existing client

8:59

applications from tail scale.

9:01

And it also adds things like funnel functionality

9:05

and beta access.

9:07

So what is a funnel?

9:08

Well, a funnel in this case is exposing a local resource

9:13

to the internet through a unique URL.

9:15

And the funnel is allowing you to share access

9:18

to the resource, right?

9:20

That would otherwise be in your cryptid tunnel

9:22

to the broader internet.

9:24

So it's a way to give Joe Schmell access to a specific service.

9:29

And head scale supports this in a beta level.

9:34

So that's one thing to keep in mind is it supports it, but it's kind of still in development.

9:39

But the main caveat of head scale is that it does not include a web UI by default.

9:45

Now I'm going to leave a link to their actual list of various web UI implementations.

9:50

And so you can add one.

9:52

I think they assume you're going to be doing this in a Docker compose container.

9:56

But head scale does not include a UI.

9:59

So maybe some people think this is a good thing because then you don't have the ability

10:02

to jump in on somebody's web UI.

10:04

But if you're expecting to have that functionality, which I think people are

10:08

if they're coming from tail scale, um, something to be aware of.

10:14

So yeah, head scale project, you can check out.

10:18

And I want to offer one more suggestion, which I find very interesting.

10:23

And this one is called pangolin.

10:25

So what is Pangolin?

10:27

Well, Pangolin is a little bit of a different take.

10:31

It's a self-hosted, tunneled reverse proxy server

10:36

with identity and content-aware access control.

10:39

It's designed to expose and protect applications

10:42

running anywhere through WireGuard.

10:45

Penguin acts as a central hub and connects isolated networks,

10:48

even those behind firewalls through encrypted tunnels.

10:52

So allowing you to access remote services

10:54

that opening ports or requiring any specific VPN even.

10:59

So what you have is you have basically

11:02

traffic reverse proxy with single sign-on and wire guard.

11:06

And it's designed to be self-hosted.

11:09

So you have the same funnel functionality,

11:12

I believe CloudFlare calls it tunnels,

11:14

where you are exposing a service.

11:17

And in this case,

11:19

Penguin offers you to do this with a pin code,

11:21

a temporary expiring link, or a password link

11:24

that can be sent

11:25

to others so they can access services.

11:27

And it's designed to be drop dead easy.

11:32

All these services are designed to be ones you can spin up and use easily.

11:35

But I like the fact that Penguin is expressly encouraging people to install their tooling

11:41

on the cheapest, possible VPS.

11:43

They recommend RACNARD, which is a VPS service

11:46

that I've personally been playing with

11:48

over the last couple years.

11:50

And I recommend Rachnerd.

11:52

I'll leave a referral link.

11:53

I have no problem with them.

11:55

I found them through Low End Box

11:57

and they're a well-received company.

12:00

They have rock bottom pricing.

12:02

But if you use the referral link,

12:04

just click reveal deals.

12:06

You'll see it right there. And you'll see VPS annual subscriptions and they start at $11.

12:11

For some reason their pricing has actually gone down from when I did it a couple of years ago.

12:15

So pretty cool. Main limitation is they're in fewer geographical areas. So Los Angeles and Jose Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, New York,

12:26

Ashburn, and then they have Toronto, Canada and Strasbourg,

12:30

France. And they described their Los Angeles DCO2 as being

12:35

specifically designed for use by people in Asia.

12:39

So Rachnerd is, is all around good.

12:44

I mean, it's like a super duper cheap deal. Rachnerd is all around good.

12:45

It's like a super duper cheap deal

12:47

and you can just buy the cheapest one for 11 bucks

12:51

or the second cheapest for 17 bucks

12:54

and basically you get like a gigabyte,

12:55

two gigabytes of RAM, a couple terabytes of traffic

12:59

which is plenty because all you're doing

13:01

is you're using one of these self-hosted VPN overlay services to add that

13:07

authentication layer to your VPN services. So it's not really doing anything other than

13:12

giving you that authentication. But yeah, net bird, head scale, pangolin, I especially

13:18

think pangolin's interesting. I like, I like all of them. I like the design of trying to add support for single sign on

13:28

and multi-factor authentication, especially from other tools,

13:31

like a Thalia key cloak.

13:33

So check out all these tools, links in the show notes.

13:37

But yeah, and feel free to reach out to the show and tell me,

13:40

"Is WireGuard hard to use?"

13:43

I don't know. And if it is hard to use,

13:47

are you doing something complicated with it? Because, uh, yeah, right into the show and tell us.

13:54

Some of you, of course, have listened to the show because you were assuming that you were

13:57

going to get the second part of the next cloud interview with Marcel and Tobias.

14:01

I'm putting that off for an episode just because I'm a little bit small to work.

14:07

But as an in-between,

14:08

I would like to give a self-hosted recommendation

14:11

for when your next cloud's not available.

14:13

So say your next cloud server goes offline

14:15

and you need to share files between a couple computers,

14:18

a couple devices,

14:20

then you can use Sync Thing.

14:23

That's right. Sync thing.

14:25

What is Sync thing?

14:27

Sync thing is a peer-to-peer file synchronization utility designed to sync files between devices on your local network or between remote devices over the internet.

14:36

It's equally usable on your local network or through VPN, whatever.

14:40

Runs on Windows, Mac OS, Linux Android, iOS, wherever.

14:44

It is free, open source software, and it is written in Go.

14:49

Sync thing is a fantastic tool.

14:51

I've been using it lately for doing audio recording between multiple computers.

14:56

Honestly, I use a pretty limited next cloud myself, my server.

15:01

I keep it small in size because I don't want to be syn sinking a lot of stuff to my phone and that includes these audio recordings.

15:07

So what I decided the last couple of episodes, like the big interview, is I did all my editing through sync thing.

15:13

All you have to do is install a client on computer A, install it on computer V, and then when you start sync thing,

15:21

it will basically pop open a little web UI interface on the local

15:26

machine and you just tell it what other computer to look for. And it can be on a network of VPN

15:31

doesn't matter. Sync Thing doesn't care. It'll connect to it. And then you can sync your files

15:35

back and forth. You can send by directional. You can send one way only. You can send to an

15:43

encrypted destination. It has all kinds of useful functionality as

15:47

a syncing tool that go beyond say next cloud. Obviously it's just for syncing, it's not

15:52

for anything else. But for a basic sync tool, syncing works awesome. And since you can run

15:58

it on your devices, you do not need a server. And any server of Sink thing can be hosted yourself.

16:05

So I've had a lot of happiness with Sink thing, works really well.

16:10

I want to encourage people who think, "Hmm, maybe I do want Sink thing, like I don't need

16:15

a big server, but I would like a web interface."

16:17

Well, I have a couple recommendations for that.

16:20

One is the project file browser.

16:24

It's been around a long time.

16:25

Gives you a nice little friendly web UI.

16:28

The other is file stash.

16:31

File stash is really cool.

16:32

They just added ARM support for Pi type devices.

16:35

File stash is literally a web client interface

16:39

that it describes themselves as being like Dropbox.

16:41

The person literally designed it

16:43

because they were frustrated with Next Club. So file stash just acts as the web client. It supports SFTP, S3, FTP, WebDav, Git,

16:52

mini L, LDAP, CalDav, Cardab, SQL, backblaze, whatever, NFS, Google Drive, all the stuff.

17:00

And it's fast, man, it's just designed to be as fast as possible. And it works well, it's coded in Go.

17:06

So if you just want to throw a web UI on something,

17:10

FileStache is a good choice.

17:11

Also, SFTP Go recommended it previously on the show.

17:16

I used it, liked it, worked well.

17:18

All of these are great tools.

17:20

Obviously, we're just talking about sync thing in terms of sharing files between computers.

17:27

But if that's your only goal and you're sharing large amounts of files, it does the job exactly as you would expect.

17:34

So I can recommend that to anyone needing basic file sharing services, even as a backup to NextCloud itself.

17:41

If you're more of just a home enthusiast self-hostor on a

17:45

few machines or whatever, seeing things got you covered, check it out, link in the show notes.

17:51

Please do look forward to the rest of the NextCloud interview with Marcel and Tobias

17:55

coming up. You can listen to the last episode to hear Tobias talk about NextCloud atomic and

18:02

immutable take on NextCloud Py, which is in development

18:05

currently.

18:07

Ways to support the podcast.

18:10

The number one way you can support this podcast is to share it with other people.

18:13

This is a really small show.

18:15

So if you're listening to it, congratulations.

18:17

You're one of the few.

18:18

If you want to share this with other people, I would really appreciate it.

18:22

I need to do a better job of sending things to social media because I'm effectively not. But I just want to focus

18:28

on the project side of things and making the show as well as I can.

18:33

So if you want to help me with sharing this show with others, I'd really

18:36

appreciate it to whatever social networks you're on. That would be awesome.

18:40

I'm also still giving a Steam key giveaway through the end of the month.

18:45

So if you want to leave a review for the podcast on whatever podcast host you have,

18:50

it could be, you know, the Apple podcasts or podcast index or whatever.

18:54

You can just drop me a link. I'll, I'll give you the rule link.

18:58

But it's basically just don't leave one word answer, you know, like cool or something.

19:02

I just ask you right, whatever you think about the show, it could be a sentence, but just be honest, I don't care what you write doesn't have to be positive or

19:08

negative, but just post something and it would really help with visibility for the show. That

19:13

will be awesome and it'll put you in a steam key drawing. So that would be great. You can also send

19:18

me donations directly on PayPal. I'll have a PayPal link and thank you to people who do that.

19:21

directly on PayPal. I'll have a PayPal link and thank you to people who do that.

19:25

Or you can also now send me donations on

19:29

Noster or as podcasting 2.0, let me donation.

19:32

I'll have a link for that as well.

19:34

And thank you to the people doing that.

19:37

So yeah, those are all ways to support me.

19:39

And thank you so much for listening.

19:42

Really appreciate it.

19:44

Now I'd like to do a little section I call are you into cyber decks, bro? What's a cyber deck?

19:49

Well cyber deck is a portable computer device

19:53

It's associated with the cyberpunk genre of like the 80s

19:57

complete runner times

19:59

It's basically a terminal like computer that hackers or netrunners or whatever would use to access other networks,

20:07

which is really what we do today with the average computer, right? You're just accessing some

20:11

other cloud computer, whatever. So cyberdex are still a thing. It's basically some kind

20:16

of physical keyboard interface that then also has a touchscreen. So it's basically a modern

20:22

cell phone equivalent. But there's different iterations of cyber decks. And one that jumped out at me and I looked them up

20:29

recently is Cyberdoor 2064. It looks like a sort of Palm Pilot blackberry device. It's

20:37

tiny. And you can 3D print it yourself using a Pi zero and a Pi Pico, and a little screen and stuff, and it just has like a rotary knob,

20:45

and it's cute.

20:47

So that's the Cyberdoor 2064, little tiny handheld Cyber Deck.

20:53

Or people are using the new Raspberry Pi keyboard devices for Cyber Deck type purposes.

21:00

And that was what I kind of wanted to talk about was there was a recently a new version of the Raspberry Pi keyboard released the 500 plus. So I thought maybe let's talk

21:10

a little bit through the history of these devices and kind of understand a little bit

21:14

more of who therefore. So first we have the Pi 400, which is still for sale. I looked

21:21

it up. It costs $66 US, another $20

21:26

to add the accessories, power supply, mouse,

21:28

things like this, SD card.

21:31

So all of these keyboards have an awkward GPIO access

21:35

in the back, right?

21:36

It's basically you're taking a Pi,

21:38

so in this case the Pi 4,

21:39

and you're actually building it into a keyboard.

21:44

And I'm not talking about the compute module version

21:46

of the Pi or, no, they actually took the device,

21:50

rebuilt it so that the keyboard itself

21:53

is also inside this giant aluminum spreader,

21:57

which greatly improved thermal performance from the Pi 4,

22:00

which kind of had really bad,

22:07

really bad power, Oh my gosh.

22:08

The Pi 4 was not known for having excellent thermal performance.

22:12

So the Pi 400 helped correct this just by the sake of having this large

22:17

thermal plate, right, to help dissipate the heat definitely is an improvement.

22:22

But you do lose a couple of things.

22:24

You lose one USB

22:25

port so it has two USB 3 and one USB 2 instead of having two of each. You also

22:32

lose a dedicated camera port, you lose the dedicated touchscreen port and you

22:38

have some just you know limitations in the design. So pi 400. It's nice. 4 gigabytes of RAM in 2025 now, of course, is not good

22:51

because I think it kind of ideas you'd write plug in a HDMI display or something, use it

22:56

as an actual computer. I would say 4 gigabytes of RAM isn't really even cutting it to run

23:01

a web browser. So, but obviously it does work and it can be used as a

23:08

Bluetooth keyboard and I think most interestingly you can actually use the Pi 400 itself as a

23:15

keyboard and I'm going to link Pi 400 KB but it actually makes the Pi 400 get treated as a generic

23:22

USB keyboard device. I mean if you're going to have a keyboard computer, why not use it as your keyboard?

23:28

So keep in mind the Pi 400 and 500 have just like that.

23:32

Chicklet clicky keyboard kind of design, right?

23:36

Which I personally don't like, but plenty of people find them fine.

23:40

So I think it's kind of cool to use this as a keyboard.

23:43

But do keep in mind if you do want to to use this as a keyboard. But do keep in mind, if you do

23:45

want to use this thing as a keyboard, you will need probably a USB-C splitter, I'll link to one

23:51

in the show notes. But the reason for that is because you want to be able to plug in the USB

23:56

from your existing computer for the keyboard. But also it's requiring power, it normally thinks

24:02

it's getting power from that USB port. So you need a USB-C splitter to get the power from your regular power supply while the USB

24:10

Connection is also happening to your computer from the Pi keyboard

24:15

right I

24:17

Think there was also interesting project called orthopi to convert the Pi 400 into a mechanical keyboard

24:24

using a Gerberboard and actually a rotary encoder

24:28

and getting the board the Gerber printed is about 20 bucks. It does double the height of the keyboard

24:34

though you're basically laying a PCB sandwich on top of the existing aluminum plate and Pi so it

24:40

becomes taller you know once you add in the mechanical chicklet keys, right? And I just wonder how comfortable is this thing to type on? How comfortable is it in the chicklet keys?

24:49

How comfortable is mechanical? I don't know. I haven't been able to use one.

24:52

I also noticed the Gerber has kind of disappeared from the way back machine. I'll drop a link though and

24:58

things interesting

25:00

interesting

25:02

project and

25:04

adding to the Pi 400 on the display side of things, you actually

25:08

have a cyber deck hat, which is produced by Adafruit.

25:11

And it's basically a $9 angled adapter that plugs in to the GPIO because the placement's

25:17

weird.

25:18

And it allows you to take a 3.5 inch style touch or non touch display, which is another

25:23

30 bucks and stick it on the back and you'll be able to look at it non-touch display, which is another 30 bucks, and stick it on the back,

25:25

and you'll be able to look at it like a little display, you know, popping out of the back

25:28

of the keyboard, which is cool.

25:31

But it is kind of chunky.

25:33

So I think even cooler than that is the Cyberdeck Bonnet hat they released.

25:38

And what that is, is it's the same concept you're taking a little angled adapter, but

25:43

instead of adding a larger display, you're

25:46

just adding a little eink or small OLED display. And it's basically the length of the GPIO,

25:52

right? Size of a Raspberry Pi, which is, you know, three inches or something across tiny display.

25:58

And I think that's pretty red. So as far as like having a little display that gives you useful

26:02

information, like you got mail or something, that's pretty cool. So cyber deck bonnet.

26:07

Nice.

26:09

And so then we've got moving along, we have the Pi 500, right, which had improved thermal performance relative to higher specs. Now we've got 8 gigabytes of RAM for uses an actual keyboard.

26:27

8GB of RAM for use as an actual keyboard or even just as an actual computer. It's like the same chocolate style keys, but you have 8GB of RAM.

26:31

So I would say at least it's functionally useful with the web browser.

26:34

It's still going to be crappy.

26:35

If you run a lot of tabs and watch YouTube or something, you're going to run into problems.

26:41

Ask me how I know.

26:42

I actually have an 8GB of RAM old laptop and I run to that problem all the time

26:46

But now the price is greatly like slightly increased by a third so now it's $90 for the basic

26:52

Pi 500 another 30 bucks for the accessories

26:56

So it's like yeah, that's good

26:58

and

26:59

Then now we have the Pi 500 plus and the 500 plus is actually making this into a mechanical

27:08

keyboard device. So you've taken the Pi 500 and with the new plus you added mechanical keyboard

27:15

that's RGB backlit. Not strictly necessary, but it's cool. But most importantly, this actually adds an M.2 slot, which means it includes NVMe storage.

27:26

But they do give you the NVMe by default.

27:29

It's a 256 gigabyte NVMe.

27:33

This raises the overall cost of the device now.

27:37

Base device from $90 in the Pi 500 to $200.

27:43

If we could have skipped that 256 gigabyte NVMe,

27:46

we probably could have dropped the price,

27:47

you know, 30 bucks or something.

27:49

But it's definitely a price increase.

27:52

So I think it is cool, but it's something to consider.

27:56

The other thing is now the power needs of this device

27:59

have jumped to five amps.

28:01

And Raspberry Pi claims that their charger

28:04

is the only one that will support the device,

28:07

which means you have to buy the accessories for an additional $30.

28:11

So that raises it to $230 for the base Pi 500 plus,

28:18

with included 256GB NVMe and the power accessory little mouse.

28:26

So it's cool at a glance,

28:31

but it raises a question in my mind,

28:33

which is also, is this thing comfortable to type on?

28:36

I haven't used one if you've used one right in the show,

28:38

but I wanna know, is the Pi of 500 plus mechanical keyboard

28:42

if you own it comfortable to type on?

28:44

It's thick, it's notably thicker than a normal keyboard and as anyone who uses a computer knows the keyboard feel is critically important

28:52

right like chick like keys have been popular for the last decade plus

28:58

Because of the fact that they feel like they're like so thin right?

29:01

It's it's as thin as possible, like the ultimate thinness,

29:05

the least travel.

29:07

And that's the thing is like touch typey,

29:10

chicklet keys.

29:11

And now we have this device that has mechanical keys,

29:13

but the whole device is really, really thick.

29:15

And it just makes me wonder like,

29:16

do I actually want to type on that?

29:18

I don't have an answer for you.

29:20

I noticed the 500 plus is not fully supported

29:24

by the pi 400

29:26

keyboard project to just use as a regular keyboard.

29:29

But maybe people don't care about that.

29:30

I just feel like if you're going to buy a keyboard computer, why not use it as

29:33

your literal keyboard?

29:35

That's just me.

29:38

So yeah, I am just curious, like, is this uncomfortable to type on?

29:42

Um, do people care about that?

29:45

I don't know.

29:47

But there is questions in my mind.

29:49

So let's just talk about you like this idea of having this like, you know, RGB mechanical

29:55

device, but let's say you're like, you're still interested in this, but you don't actually

30:00

need the keyboard.

30:02

Well, what I ended up buying personally,

30:05

and I've got here is the Kibo 2040.

30:08

It's a Pi Pico based RGB lit mechanical 12 key keyboard.

30:14

So it's kind of like one of those Steam decks.

30:15

It's just Python programmed over USB,

30:18

plug it in as a USB device.

30:20

It shows up as a file, you edit that file,

30:23

and then it'll do whatever you set.

30:25

My issue now is I just don't know what to do with it, but it was basically $60, so more

30:32

or less the same price as the original Pi 400, which is $66 without the accessories.

30:38

So, keyboard 2040, Pi Pico, it's tiny, it's the size of my wallet, and it works. It's easy and it's

30:49

well made, it's a little PCB sandwich, and I like it. I'm not sure what to do with it. What should I

30:56

do? Let me know. I also wanted to offer a keyboard suggestion in general. If you just want a bomb proof cheap keyboard, I would recommend the

31:06

Dell SK8115. It's been a standard for 20 plus years. And the Dell SK8115 turns up at Goodwill

31:17

and thrift stores a lot for like a buck. I looked it up on eBay, it's around $12 to maybe

31:23

20, including shipping retail.

31:25

It's $60.

31:25

They still sell them.

31:27

But this is a bomb proof.

31:28

It raised key keyboard.

31:31

It looks nice.

31:32

It's USB and it literally will last for decades

31:34

of nonstop abuse.

31:35

It's meant to be spilled on and damaged and beaten

31:40

for years and years and years.

31:43

But I have one.

31:44

I've used one,

31:45

I've seen them in libraries and schools for many years

31:48

and I can highly recommend the Dell SK8115.

31:52

If you just want a keyboard and you don't care

31:54

if it's mechanical, the Dell will get it done

31:58

for the lowest possible price

31:59

and it will last you for as long as possible

32:01

and it's great keyboard.

32:04

So it's a typical wired USB keyboard, but it works well. And those are my

32:08

thoughts. I'd be curious what your thoughts are on cyber decks, the pie

32:12

keyboards. Is it something that makes sense? Do you use it? Or is it

32:18

something where you plug it in? And then you like, you kind of like

32:21

leave it in a corner somewhere, even though there's a keyboard on it.

32:23

But then it's like, why not just get the regular pie where you don't have the keyboard?

32:27

I don't know, man.

32:28

Thanks again to all of you for listening, supporting Linux Prepper podcast.

32:32

Really appreciate it.

32:33

And you can look forward to another episode coming soon because I still need to finish the rest of my interview with

32:39

Tobias and Marcel on next cloud secrets.

32:42

You have that to look forward to also Also, an interview with Sean Tilly

32:46

all about the Fediverse and we distribute.

32:49

So a couple of things coming up.

32:50

I just have a lot of work,

32:52

things that I have to deal with in this next week.

32:54

So I just wanna get this episode out there

32:57

and a little bit short, but I think that's fine.

33:00

Let me know what you think.

33:01

As always, on the episode,

33:03

feel free to email me podcast@james.network.

33:05

You can also fill out my anonymous feedback form,

33:07

or you can join our matrix chat or check out discuss.james.network

33:11

for the forum.

33:13

And thank you again, and have a great day.

33:15

Bye.

33:16

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