#hardware

It has been 10 years since I ran Cardboctober, a month-long hackathon in which I created something new for Google Cardboard each day and wrote about it. I considered doing it again this year, but my time is spread thinner these days than it was in 2016, so I thought I’d do a bit of a retrospective on the WebVR and Google Cardboard scene instead.

I saw the Hidizs AP30 Music Boy on Reddit and got curious enough to reach out to Hidizs to see if they’d send me one to review. It’s a palm-sized DAP that launched on Kickstarter on 23 July 2026, and it’s pitching itself as a companion device rather than a standalone player, something to clip to a bag, hang round a neck, or snap to the back of a phone. I’ve had it for five weeks now, including a holiday where I used it out and about, long enough to have formed opinions beyond “this is a cute novelty.”

For years I was firmly in the mechanical keyboard camp, and specifically a 60% person. No numpad, no function row, no arrow cluster, just the keys I actually used, in a footprint small enough to leave room for the mouse. A handful of boards came and went, but they all had the same shape: clacky, and a bit of a statement piece on the desk. There’s still a couple in the photo on my now page, left over from that era. Lately though, I’ve drifted somewhere unexpected: low-profile, and further than that (off mechanical switches entirely). I’ve been daily driving a Logitech MX Keys alongside an MX Master 2S, and enjoying it more than I expected to. The original reason I picked them up had nothing to do with typing feel, it was for multi-device pairing. Both can be paired with multiple machines, one over the USB receiver for automatic switching, and up to two more over Bluetooth via a button on the device. Back then I had a Windows PC and a MacBook, and hopping between them without re-pairing was exactly what I needed. What’s kept them on my desk is something I didn’t plan for though: now that I’m on macOS day to day, Universal Control does most of that job for me, no more relying on third-party apps like Synergy2 or Duet to move a single keyboard and mouse between machines. The original reason has quietly become less important, and I’m still using them anyway. The keyboard charges over USB-C, wakes from a light touch on the frame, and is already ready to go by the time my hands land on the keys. The mouse, frustratingly, charges via micro USB (the newer MX Master 3S fixes that gap). But the bigger surprise has been the typing feel itself. I expected to miss the travel, the tactile bump, the clacking sound. In practice the low-profile scissor switches have been comfortable enough for long sessions that I haven’t gone looking for a replacement, quieter and flatter than the taller boards I used to run. The thing I do miss is the customisation, going through keycap sets bought because the key profile (obviously XDA is the best key profile) or key legend caught my eye. There’s no equivalent here, same slab of keys every day. None of those old purchases were extravagant on their own, but it added up over years in a way I didn’t notice until I totalled it up. This one, by contrast, was one purchase: £96 back in 2023, and that’s been it since. Old habits die hard, mind you, the numpad sits there on the right collecting dust, a little monument to a decade of telling people I didn’t need one. I don’t think I’m done with mechanical keyboards for good, but for the keyboard I reach for every day, low-profile and boring-in-a-good-way has won out, for now.

Between March 2011 and October 2021 I backed 19 Kickstarter projects, spending £386 and $565 across the lot. Here they all are, in order, with what became of each. March 2011 Minecraft: The Story of Mojang $30filmstandalone My first ever Kickstarter was 2 Player Productions’ documentary about Mojang’s first year. It delivered in late 2012, and I took the DVD tier, so my name is in the credits. I no longer own anything that can play the disc, but it’s a neat thing to have. On launch day 2PP uploaded the film to The Pirate Bay themselves, asking people to buy it if they could rather than pretend piracy wasn’t going to happen, and it went free on YouTube the following year. January 2013 GCW-Zero $155consolestandalone An open-source Linux retro handheld built around the Ingenic JZ4770, pitched as the spiritual successor to the Dingoo, by Justin Barwick (a Dingoonity regular). It delivered in 2013, but the shipping was a mess. We hosted the official GCW Zero subforum on Dingoonity, and it turned into a wall of “where’s my order?” posts despite us having nothing to do with fulfilment. I still have mine. It was underwhelming: by the time it arrived I had countless other devices that did the same job, often better. The community software carried it, but the hardware itself was nothing special. March 2013 Sweetbox II £32accessoryraspberry-pi A case for the Raspberry Pi. It arrived, but it fit an old model of Pi, so it stopped being useful fairly quickly. I’ve had better cases since, and these days I’d just 3D print an equivalent if I needed one. July 2013 Fairywren £50diyraspberry-pi A mini-ITX baseboard for the Raspberry Pi. It arrived. I never used it. I had aspirations and never got round to it (ADHD caveman brain). September 2013 RFIDler £24diystandalone A software-defined RFID reader, writer and emulator. It arrived, and I never worked out a good use for it. Writable RFID tags got cheap enough to buy and write straight from my phone, so I never needed it. I’ve got a backburner idea to make custom Tonies for the kids’ Toniebox, but they’ll probably grow up before I get to it. November 2013 Kano $120diyraspberry-pi A build-it-yourself computer kit wrapped around a Raspberry Pi, aimed at teaching kids to assemble and code. It delivered in 2014, a couple of months late, which for hardware is nothing. It seemed like a nice bit of kit, so I gave it to a nephew that Christmas. As far as I know the bright orange keyboard is still going strong. Kano itself became a real London company, raising around $45 million, doing the Harry Potter coding wand and a Windows machine with Microsoft, before drifting away from Pi kits entirely into Stem consumer audio (the Kanye West Stem Player) and splitting into two companies in 2023. March 2014 Planets³ $20videogamestandalone A voxel-based open-world RPG. It half delivered. Renamed Stellar Overload, it reached Steam early access, but Cubical Drift went bankrupt around 2018 and pulled it from sale unfinished. Backers were left with a Steam key for a dead game. I can’t even remember playing it. April 2014 LAST LIFE $15videogamestandalone A sci-fi noir adventure about investigating your own murder on Mars, with Double Fine attached as publisher. It never came out. Double Fine dropped it, the creator kept expanding the scope, the money ran out, and it ended up sitting unfinished on his hard drives. A complete write-off. June 2014 MyPifi LED board £6diyraspberry-pi An LED board kit for the Raspberry Pi. I remember soldering it together. I couldn’t tell you where it is now. June 2014 TerraTech £10videogamestandalone Physics-based vehicle construction and combat from Payload Studios. This one delivered properly. It left early access as a full release in 2018 and is still a supported game. I have no memory of playing it. November 2014 Espruino Pico £17diyespruino JavaScript on a USB stick, and the first of four things I backed from Gordon Williams at Espruino. He’s a local creator and the campaigns were always fun to back and tinker with, so once I’d backed one I kept coming back. It delivered, as all of his did. August 2015 The imossi N1 wallet £29accessorystandalone An RFID-protected wallet. I used it for about six years. These days I’ve got a MagSafe card holder on the back of my phone and mostly pay by contactless, so it’s retired. November 2015 Tingbot £50diyraspberry-pi A Raspberry Pi gadget with a screen, meant to make the Pi fun to build on. It delivered and I got into it for a bit, but in the end I needed the Pi for another project. It’s still in parts in my parts bin. I’d love to get it running again, but I don’t think the software stack is supported any more. December 2015 Pine A64 $41diystandalone A cheap 64-bit single-board computer pitched as a Raspberry Pi rival. It arrived barebones, the OS images weren’t great, and I already had Pis that did the job, so it was in a drawer before long. The company stuck around where most “Pi killers” didn’t, and Pine64 went on to make the Pinebook, PinePhone, PineTime and a line of RISC-V boards. The thing of theirs I actually use is the Pinecil, a USB-C soldering iron I bought later and still reach for often. July 2016 Puck.js £47 for twodiyespruino Gordon’s Bluetooth beacon, again running Espruino’s JavaScript. I spent proper time with these, contributing to a media-control script, nextSongPuck, and actually used it. August 2016 The Superbook $164accessorystandalone A laptop shell that turned an Android phone into a laptop, from Andromium, later Sentio. It raised nearly $3 million, one of the biggest hardware campaigns on Kickstarter at the time, then unravelled. They shipped about 75% of units before running out of money around 2019, with a distributor allegedly making off with $300,000 of inventory. Mine did arrive, after a very long wait, and it completely missed the mark. A 2016-era Android phone driving a laptop shell was beaten by any number of cheap old laptops, several of which I now own. I’ve still got the sheet of keyboard legend stickers and the Sentio-branded sleeve. The Superbook itself, I couldn’t tell you where it is. November 2019 Bangle.js £46wearableespruino Gordon’s hackable smartwatch. JavaScript on a watch (yes please, in principle). I wore it and gave it a proper go, but it was chunky and the software side was a bit of a bodge, so I went back to a better-supported watch of the time, a Pebble or similar. January 2021 Paper Apps Dungeon $20 for twotabletopstandalone A dungeon game in a 3x5 notepad. Delivered, and it still ends up in my bag from time to time. It’s a nice way to play something without a screen, and I’m holding onto it for when the kids are old enough to enjoy it. October 2021 Bangle.js 2 £75wearableespruino The second-generation open smartwatch from Espruino, and the last thing I’ve backed. Much the same story as the first, though nicer made. I bought it mostly to support Gordon. It sits in a drawer with my other watches now (I wear a Pixel Watch 2 these days). I’ve not backed anything since the second Bangle.js. Time and money are part of it: I’ve less of both spare for a bet that might take three years to arrive, if it arrives at all. The rest is the platform. In 2011 Kickstarter felt like funding things that wouldn’t otherwise exist. A lot of it now reads as drop-shipped tat with a slick video, or projects carrying enough red flags that another Superbook feels more likely than not. Almost everything above did arrive. Not much of it stuck.

I’ve had the Xteink X4 for a couple of months now, a £40 e-ink reader small enough to stick to the back of a phone. I’d seen a few posts about it (Khairul Selamat, Neil Brown, joelchrono, and moddedbear among them), so I got curious and ordered one.

Anbernic sent me an RG DS to review. It’s a clamshell Android handheld designed to evoke the Nintendo DS, running Android 14 on a Rockchip RK3568 with dual 4-inch screens. At around $95 (roughly £75), it sits in the same budget bracket as the Mangmi Air X I reviewed last year, but where that was a capable general-purpose handheld, this one has a much narrower brief.

The Game Boy Camera was brilliant and stupid in equal measure, a 128x112 pixel sensor bolted on top of a cartridge, printing to thermal paper on a Game Boy Printer the size of a brick. I got both for Christmas when I was 12 and somehow spent hours with them. The minigames are absurd, the image quality is aggressively awful, and the whole thing looks like a prop from a cheap sci-fi film. I loved it.

I’ve been using Google’s Call Screening feature for a while now. I turned it on mostly to filter out calls from numbers I don’t recognise (I’ve signed up with TPS and reported numbers to the ICO, and neither has made much difference), but in practice it’s doing something I didn’t quite expect: it’s almost exclusively screening other AIs.

I recently picked up two Pixel C tablets from a seller on eBay, along with the magnetic keyboard. One tablet had a cracked screen but worked fine and wasn’t locked. The other was cosmetically perfect but the display was completely black. I figured between the two I could end up with at least one working tablet.

I’ve gone through a few sets of Joy-Cons since buying my Switch back in 2018. Every pair has ended up with stick drift, and at this point my Switch is running Android full time, so spending £60 on first-party replacements felt like a waste. I picked up the LinYuvo KS42 from AliExpress for around £18 instead.

I’ve owned plenty of Kindles and Android tablets over the years, but I’ve been curious about colour e-ink for a while - whether it’s actually useful or just a gimmick.

I’ve got an old 2009 MacBook 6,1 (A1342) kicking about in my office that I’ve been playing with on and off lately.

I helped crowdfund the DevTerm from ClockworkPi back in November 2020 and it arrived in January 2022. It’s a nice device, but it’s not perfect. Here’s some of the mods I’ve made to improve my DevTerm.

I sold my HTC Vive back in 2020 and bought an Oculus Quest. Was it an impulsive lockdown treat? Perhaps; but it was time for an upgrade. I went for the 128GB model, and had to order from the German Amazon store as nowhere in the UK had stock at the time. I was impressed with Amazon Prime in this case, and then in awe of their logistics network. I ordered at around midday, and then received the Oculus Quest 24 hours later from Germany at no extra cost.

The Pocket CHIP doesn’t come with internal speakers. It has the GPIO pins for audio, but nothing is hooked up. On the CHIP itself there is a 3.5mm audio jack for connecting headphones, and you can pair a Bluetooth speaker. On the old NTC blog there was a post back in 2016 about adding an internal speaker using a fairly inexpensive PAM8403 amplifier and a speaker. You can find a mirror of the old post from the NTC blog on archive.org

I bought a ClockworkPi GameShell back in October 2019. I’ve been playing with it a bit lately (in anticipation of the ClockworkPi DevTerm shipping!) and I realised I haven’t yet posted anything about it on here. Here’s some of the hardware mods I’ve made to my GameShell.

In January the Raspberry Pi Pico was announced. The Pico is a RP2040 microcontroller featuring a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor with 264KB internal RAM and support for up to 16MB of off-chip Flash. It’s comparable to certain Arduino or ESP32 boards and at less than £4 per board it’s a well-priced alternative.

This page is a changing document. I’ll probably add more notes to it in the future. These are just some notes that I’ve put together in the past about flashing and upgrading the CHIP (and Pocket CHIP) computer.

I’ve just got hold of a Lenovo Ideapad Duet 2-in-1 Chromebook/tablet. ChromeOS seems to have come quite a long way since I last used the HP Chromebook 11 back in 2013. With native support for Android apps and a full Debian linux that seemlessly integrates with the rest of the OS – maybe we’re finally at a point where a Chromebook could be a device capable of doing real work!

I finally got around to assembling this little Peanut kit that I bought from Tindie a couple of months ago. The kit comes with everything you need (except a battery) to build a tiny (50 x 35mm) Arduboy-compatible handheld game. The specs are as follows: Arduino Pro Micro 0.96” OLED screen Piezo speaker The build instructions were very simple to follow, requiring only basic soldering skills (and a tiny SMD resistor to change out). Uploading games to the Peanut is pretty straight-forward. On Windows there are a couple of applications available. On Linux the process is a little more involved but it works great once you’ve got it set up. The only thing to note – in my experience – the ATTRS{idProduct} for the udev rules is slightly different with the Arduino Pro Micro provided in the Peanut kit, but you can easily find the correct value by checking the output of lsusb. There’s a bunch of games available on the Arduboy forum and also a nice curated list of games that can be automatically uploaded with the desktop app.

This is an overview of why and how I decided to automate part of my home, and build my first IoT device…

Well I took another look at the design of my macro keys project sooner than I expected. I started over with the design of the 3D-printed part of this project, and then moved the buttons and guts over from the previous version.

After my previous macro key project back in January that used full-size arcade buttons, I was itching to make a more compact set of macro keys.

I went back to the drawing board with the amp design, this time with the goal to make the layout more symmetrical and to move the AUX input to the back of the amp.

My wife and I like to have the radio playing all night in our bedroom. Our radio only has one mono speaker and it sits on one side of the bed which means for it to be audible on both sides of the bed one person has to have a loud speaker next to their pillow.

I bought a 3D printer back in November last year and have been steadily filling my home office with 3D-printed miniatures, things to fiddle with, and functional solutions to problems that I didn’t realise needed fixing since then.

Today I’m reviewing the DPVR E3. This is a Virtual Reality headset with a high resolution display, comfortable straps and an experience that’s similar to the Oculus Rift.

The Virtoba S1 is a Daydream compatible controller from China that costs around £15 ($20). Let me just start with saying I’ve got a lot of cheap Bluetooth controllers – and for the most part they’re crap. I hit the “Buy now” button for the Virtoba S1 half expecting this to be the case, but I was quite happily wrong.

The GPD Pocket is a 7” Ultra-mobile PC that at first glance resembles a shrunken Apple Laptop, but it’s metal unibody exterior is where the similarities end.

I bought an HTC Vive last November (a week before the Black Friday sales, doh!) and have spent the time since trying to get the most out of it. So here are some highlights, thoughts and other musings about the HTC Vive.

I’ve been on the hunt for a 10” tablet for a couple of months now. Besides Google’s Pixel C, there isn’t much choice in this area (ignoring the iPad). There are a bunch of options for cheap Atom-based Android/Windows tablets on Gearbest/Aliexpress/etc. I decided to buy a Chuwi Vi10 Plus on Gearbest. For less than £120 what could I lose?

I jumped on Android 6.0 Marshmallow as soon as the developer images were available to flash, and to be honest as far as “major releases” go, it was pretty underwhelming. A lot of the new features aren’t things I need, and I’ve found myself running in to a bug with device orientation in Chrome (only!) not working.

I’m back with another Android console out of China from GPD, the GPD XD. I’ve had the GPD XD for a couple of weeks now, and to be honest I’ve been unable to put it down! In short it’s a great device for portable gaming, and it also handles my media needs with ease. This device was generously provided by Geekbuying, so I’ll provide more information about where to buy the GPD XD from the Geekbuying store at the end of this review.

A different sort of review today, the Mars G01 Game Pad from Tronsmart. Geekbuying provided me with this G01 to review, so first of all a thanks to them for that. I’ll mention where you can purchase the G01 at the end of the review.

I’ve got another Android gaming handheld to review, the GPD G5A from GamePad Digital. I’ve had this device for a little while now, and have played with it loads. This device was sent to my directly from GPD back in February, but I’ve been too busy with life to write up a review.

Hot on the heels of my last Android device review I’m back with another device: The GPD G7 Quad-core from GamePad Digital. The G7 is very similar to the JXD 7800B, but with a more ergonomic game-controller shape to it.

I wrote back in May about having a Raspberry Pi, and very few ideas about what to do with it. Here’s an update on the subject.

It has been a while since I’ve had a new portable console to play with (and I’m still waiting for my GCW to arrive!), so let’s ease back in to this stuff with an Android-powered console from JinXang Digital (JXD): The JXD 7800B.

I bought a HP Chromebook 11 as soon as I possibly could when it was announced. I’ve had a couple of weeks to play with it now, so here are my thoughts…

This past weekend I held my first hack day. This is a recollection of why/how SusHack came to be, and how the day went.

Earlier this year, Jenny got a Fitbit Zip, it’s basically a pedometer, but with the added cool-factor that it can synchronise over Bluetoooth with your computer (and some mobile devices), so that you can see statistics about your daily step count, active times of the day, etc. all online.

If you happen to have installed the Blackberry Desktop Software and you want to remove it and it’s annoying persistant daemons, you might have discovered that this can only be done by downloading the 70mb installer dmg, and running the uninstaller.

I was going to title this post “In which I moan about the Raspberry Pi”, read on to find out why. I’ve had a Model B Raspberry Pi in my possesion for nearly two months now, and beyond playing with pre-built OS images for it, or setting up an AirPlay server, I’ve not really put the Pi to much use.

I had a Nokia N900 when they first came out, this was unfortunately shortly before Android had matured to a usable state, and so I didn’t use my Nokia N900 for long.

Last week, a Ubuntu native installer for the Nexus 7 was released, along with instructions on how to install Ubuntu on the Nexus 7. The plan is that the Nexus 7 will be the ‘core’ device that Canonical will build their tablet version of Ubuntu around. Right now, it’s quite experimental – the interface sees no tweaks for the tablet interface, beyond having an onscreen keyboard available.

I’ve been putting this post off, and it has been hard. I usually like to declare my love for a new gadget just moments or hours after unboxing it; I’ve had a lot of tablets over the past couple of years that I’ve done that with, only to later change my mind, so I thought I’d use the Nexus 7 for a little while and then splooge about how much I love it, here on my blog.

I decided to buy an Android-powered set top box because my Apple TV 1 didn’t cut it for playing HD media, and I find it inconvenient to hook my MacBook up to the TV everytime I want to watch some HD media.

I’ve had my Macbook Pro for about a year now. It’s the Early-2011 15” bells and whistles model. The specs (the bits we care about, if you can’t be bothered to click the link) are as follows: CPU: 2.2ghz Core i7 RAM: 4gb (2x2gb) DDR3 HDD: 750gb

I’ve got lots of gadgets. I love gadgets. I’ve got a drawer full of portable games, and have a number of other non-game gadgets (though they’re mostly all able to play videogames!) My most recent gadget purchase was a Kindle 3 Wifi edition. I bought this device after three days of deliberation - quite a lengthy amount of time, given my usually impulsive habit of purchasing things. Since it arrived I’ve tried numerous e-book formats on it, all with great results, tried out the “experimental” web browser, which works very well given the limitations of the e-ink screen, and even modded the Kindle to allow for custom sleep/screensaver images Here are a couple of the screensaver images I’ve made: Unable to recover the image :( If you’ve got a Kindle and you’d like to use these, first you will need to mod the Kindle firmware, using the installers found here - http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88004 Over-all the Kindle is a great device. The screen is readable from any angle, and I find that many people have a hard time understanding that it’s a screen. It’s really nice.

This probably isn’t a new idea, but i think i executed it nicely.. i had this 512mb sony usb stick, which was pretty scratched up, and i had lost the cap for it.. so i decided i’d put it inside some lego bricks.

a little over a week late, and at a time inconvenient to my night dwelling self.. this morning my pc stuff arrived.

damn, i’m broke at the moment. spent £70 (incl. vat & postage) last monday on a new 120gb hard drive.. that was ok, as:

got the heatsink yesterday… :D .. fitted it, that was easy enough, plugged everything in, turned on the pc and then… beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep a BIOS stop code error.. could be one of two things.. bad GFX card.. or bad RAM. well, i managed to rule the first thing (the GFX) out.. evidently it beeps even without the card in (although that could just be it bitching that there isnt a card) and so, after reading the manual, decided it was the RAM. apparently the chipset on my motherboard (chipset: SIS, mobo: ASUS ASRock) requires certain things from certain ram speeds.. as follows: on the motherboard there are three DIMM slots.. PC2100 (DDR266) 1 stick in each of the three DIMM slots, Max. 3GB PC2700 (DDR333) 1 stick in two of the three DIMM slots, Max. 2GB PC3200 (DDR400) 1 stick in one of the three DIMM slots, Max. 1GB basically, if i read that right.. i need 3 sticks of this DDR266 .. not 2.. like i ordered. :| you’d think they’d tell you this, eh? bastids. … sooo.. in an hour or so, i’m off to the hospital for my quarterly diabetes clinic.. yay! :| … but after that, me and dad are gonna go buy another stick of RAM.. so my new pc should be up and running tonight.. hopefully.

well, i got the memory problem sorted out.. now all i need is a different graphics card… it turns out the old tnt2 is incompatible with my current setup.. so until i buy a new card… … or find someone nice enough to lend me one… … i can’t use the new pc :( :| poo.

wow, today has been fun.. well, kinda… my PC hardware arrived for my new PC.. amd2200+ cpu 512mb ram asus asrock motherboard dvd drive q-tec case (black with a side window, and a whole collection of LED’s to play with :D) so, it all arrived, and i put it together.. sucker took an hour and a half to put together, and if it works.. i will be happy. see, i can’t actually use it yet.. as i said, it all arrived.. but one thing didn’t.. the heatsinc and cooler for my cpu.. so, unless i want to, in the simplest explanation, kill my cpu.. well, i cant use it yet :( kinda sad really :( i’ve waited three weeks longer than i should have for my order, it arrives.. i get all excited, build it, its nice and stuff.. and i can’t use it :| site update: last night, as i said i would, i added the “about me” page.. i have still yet to finish the portfolio portion of my site.. i planned on releasing it tomorrow.. but i can’t see myself having it done.. i havent touched the code for a few days. i noticed a bug in the php for this portion of the site.. whenever i post an entry, it reads the time from the server… this is a problem, because the server is located in canada.. i think (6 hours minus my time zone) and i’m located in england.. so this entry time may say “17:30” but, infact its more like “23:30” my time.. .. if i decide not to finish the portfolio tomorrow, then i will work on the code for the time on this. school good news.. i got a B on one of my math exams.. meh, it’ll do for me :)