Pseudonymous maker “jefmer” has designed a conveyable Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W-powered PC with a compact ortholinear mechanical keyboard, situated straight beneath a 7″ colour show: the Pickle Pi.

“The identify of this undertaking comes — pretty clearly — from the mixture of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and the Gherkin 30% mechanical keyboard,” jefmer explains of the gadget’s uncommon moniker. “Having used 40% keyboards in my final two tasks (Transportable Pi and Pocket Pad) I wished to attempt a fair smaller keyboard” a 30% keyboard has precisely 30 keys whereas a 40% keyboard really has 48 keys.”

Utilizing a TRS-80 Mannequin 100-style flat format, reasonably than a contemporary clamshell kind issue, the Pickle Pi is designed to be each compact and finger-friendly. The keyboard — in distinction with the maker’s earlier PDA-inspired Pocket Pad — makes use of full-size keycaps on commonplace mechanical switches, albeit in a compact ortholinear format that requires using layers to entry something aside from alphabetical characters.

Above the keyboard is a Waveshare 7″ touchscreen show, providing a 1,024×600 decision and a controller board designed particularly to be used with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W — probably the most highly effective of the Raspberry Pi Zero vary, and the one mannequin to supply greater than a single processor core. An Arduino-compatible keyboard controller hyperlinks the Raspberry Pi to the keyboard, and a 10Ah battery pack supplies energy for on-the-go operation — all sandwiched between two items of perspex.

“I actually just like the Pickle Pi’s pill format and the Gherkin is an effective way of offering full measurement keys such that the keyboard continues to be appropriate with the general pill dimensions,” jefmer writes. “Much less passable is the limitation on the packages that the pill can run [on its 512MB of RAM]. Consequently, the following step on this undertaking is to have a look at the feasibility of changing the Pi Zero with a Pi 4. I’ve already established that the ability financial institution will not be able to assembly the wants of a Pi 5.”

The complete undertaking write-up is out there on Hackday.io.