Eric Migicovsky, who once founded the manufacturer of smart watches Pebble and a couple of years ago opened the universal messenger Beeper, announced another project. It was called Beepberry – a device with a keyboard from an old Blackberry smartphone, a Raspberry Pi Zero W board and a 2.7-inch black and white Memory LCD display, the resolution of which is 400 × 240 pixels.
At first glance, the Beepberry device is designed for only one purpose – to run the Beeper client and correspond in one of the supported instant messaging systems, but the creator is ready to position it more widely – as a computer “on electronic paper” for enthusiasts. There are examples of running a weather widget and playing Ascii Star Wars.
For $99, the author of the project offers a kit that includes a Raspberry Pi Zero W board, a display manufactured by Sharp, a backlit keyboard from a Blackberry Classic Q20 smartphone, a USB Type-C port, an RGB LED, additional control buttons and a 2000 mAh battery.
It is worth noting that the Beepberry kit is devoid of a module for connecting to a mobile network, so you can use the device only in a room where there is Wi-Fi, or connect via a smartphone. The project’s website contains all the software components and materials necessary for the operation of the device and materials for printing the device case on a 3D printer. Unfortunately, only 50 sets of Beepberry are available in the first phase.