Recommended on Intelligent Dithering

Dual Screen DIY CyberDeck

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 10:52:46 +0000

A cyberdeck is a custom-built, portable computer, often with a cyberpunk aesthetic, designed for accessing and interacting with cyberspace. In science fiction, they are used by hackers to connect to digital worlds, often for activities like hacking, data theft, or controlling machines. Real-world cyberdecks are typically built around single-board computers and designed to evoke this cyberpunk style and scratch an itch for the maker who designs it.

There are plenty of “cyberdeck” builds out there but this latest one from Sector 07 has really caught my eye. It is a Dual Screen DIY Cyberdeck built around the Raspberry Pi single board computer featuring twin rotating touchscreens.

This one has it all.

Stunning retro-futuristic look
Dual rotating touch screens
Snap-fit 3D printed enclosure
Access to GPIO for prototyping
Integrated keyboard
Open source files and parts so you can build your own
Extensive documentation

The attention to detail that Sector 07 have given to this device is amazing. It looks like a finished product and the aesthetic is super cool.

Take a break to watch the video below, it really is worth your time and if you decide to build one yourself or have other cyberdecks you think we should know about let us know in the comments.

5 Father's Day Gift Ideas for Geeks

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Father’s Day 2025 is rapidly approaching so here are a few ideas to help you keep that geeky dad in your life happy!

Whether it is for a new dad, a dad-to-be or an old hand, these gifts will hopefully spark your inspiration and ensure they have a smile on their face come the 15th June.

Raspberry Pi Starter Kit

Mid-life crisis hits people differently, but a new hobby is usually on the cards. If they are interested in tech and tinkering, then a Raspberry Pi will open a whole world of possibilities for them. From Home Automation to programming, robot building or just playing around with some LEDs anyone who likes to fidget and tinker will love this.

🔗 https://amzn.to/4kRJKxI

Home Assistant Green

The Home Assistant / Nabu Case Green is a dedicated hardware device to run your Home Assistant software. As it is made by Nabu Casa, it is fully supported by them. It is one of the easiest and most reliable ways to get started on your Home Automation journey. I run my house on one of these and it hasn’t missed a beat in over 9 months. It is what I connect my DIY home energy monitoring project to.

🔗 https://amzn.to/4jEvSpJ

Soldering Iron Kit

No self-respecting geek should be without a soldering kit in their home. Especially paired with the Raspberry Pi, soldering can be incredibly rewarding when you build your first circuit and control it from code that you wrote. Being able to fix faulty Christmas tree lights and other items around the home just makes having a kit like this all the more worthwhile.

🔗 https://amzn.to/3TaplIq

Mini Bluetooth Label Printer - BIG DISCOUNT!

Once you start amassing tinkering kit, you will end up with drawers and drawers of components and it soon gets hard to find things. And another critical component of a mid-life crisis is a sense of dread and overwhelm leading to a deep want to reorganise EVERYTHING. Labelling is your friend in this endeavour!

Plus this one is on a deep discount at the moment. Snap it up before it’s too late!

🔗 https://amzn.to/4dRyv69

Precision motorised screwdriver

Once you get into tinkering a decent screwdriver set is an absolute necessity. You want a kit that has lots of tiny interchangeable heads and these kits also come with an electric screwdriver designed for working with very delicate screws found in electronics. Save your aging wrists and invest in one of these today. You won’t regret it!

🔗 https://amzn.to/4kMY36I

TLS Inspector: essential free iOS app for webmasters

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

TLS Inspector is a great free app from developer Ian Spence that I use quite regularly at home and especially in work.

It is great for quickly checking for expiry dates on certificates, or why a certificate is not working as expected. You can also delve into the certificate chain to check for any inconsistencies. Very useful if you think a website might be suspect!

There have been other apps like this in the past but the one feature that I particularly love about TLS Inspector is the Share Sheet extension. This allows you to quickly check website you have open in Safari simply by using the share menu. No faffing about copying the URL, switching apps, trying to paste it and remove the non-domain bits.

Just tap “Show Certificate” and off you go!

Download a copy of it for free now from the App Store.

Turn your iPad into a portable HDMI screen for free

Sun, 08 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Using the free app Orion you can connect any video source to your iPad and use it as a portable HDMI monitor and screen recorder!

I discovered this app this week from John Gruber on Daring Fireball. Having played around with it I think it will be a really handy part of my geek toolkit. The ability to very quickly use your iPad as a monitor is invaluable.

Use cases for portable HDMI screen:

Portable monitor for retro gaming setup
Simple screen recording setup to grab quick video from any HDMI source
Handy portable screen to plug into headless servers to check things

To get set up all you need is to download the Orion app from the iOS App Store and then connect up your source.

To do this I used a cheap USB HDMI capture card from Amazon and a USB-C adaptor. Simply plug this into the iPad, fire up Orion and then turn on your source device. I have made a quick YouTube video showing this process for connecting to a Raspberry Pi.

I can see myself using this in work to check on headless servers without having to lug a whole screen and power leads etc about with me. Even as a diagnostic tool when visiting clients to check a faulty screen. So many uses for this and the fact that it is free just makes it all the sweeter.

Let me know what uses you find for it! Happy dithering!

Raspberry Pi 5 Announced

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Raspberry Pi Trading Company have just announced the Raspberry Pi 5 and it is available to pre-order now, shipping in late October. Of course they announced this less than 24 hours after I wrote a post about using the Raspberry Pi 4 for Digital Signage! This new Pi will be even better for that as you will be able to run two 4K screens at once with it!

So what is new and exciting in this updated single board computer? Read on to find out!

CPU - 2-3x faster

The CPU has been replaced with a new Broadcom BCM2712 64-bit quad core ARM Cortex-A76 processor that is between 2 and 3 times faster than the one on the Pi 4. This will be a noticeable boost in performance for all users.

GPU Updated

The Raspberry Pi 5 has a VideoCore VII GPU on board able to run dual 4Kp60 displays without breaking a sweat. This upgrade should also be a major boost for the retro gaming emulation solutions out there, which will make the Pi 5 pretty much the ultimate retro gaming machine!

USB bandwidth doubled

USB ports now have double the bandwidth on the Raspberry Pi 5 and there are 2x USB 3 and 2x USB 2 ports. This will make running from portable drive significantly faster and should allow for more scope when building network attached storage solutions using the Pi. Plex server on the Pi could be on the cards again!

MicroSD slot twice as fast

The MicroSD slot has been upgraded to be twice as fast on Raspberry Pi 5, and combined with the CPU upgrades I think this will really be noticeable in daily use. Boot-up times will feel incredibly quick with this upgrade as long as you get a decent SD card to take advantage of it.

PCI-Express!!!

Yes you read that right. The card has a port to break out a single lane PCI-Express port which should open up tons of possibilities for connecting high speed peripherals in the future. Think 10Gig ethernet cards, possibly graphics cards and fast storage RAID solutions. This is a space to watch!

Dual camera / display slots

These dual CSI/DSI ports will support any combination of up to two cameras or displays. But beware, the connectors are different on the Raspberry Pi 5 compared to the old CSI ports so you may need to buy new ribbon cable adaptors to make your existing kit work. Plenty of the usual stockists will have these cables ready for launch.

Raspberry Pi 5 gets a POWER BUTTON!!

This might be the biggest FINALLY of all! They have added a power button to the Raspberry Pi 5 so you no longer have to pull the USB cable out or go hoking under your desk looking for the power switch. And the new Raspberry Pi official case comes with an outer button lined up to this for easy access.

Real-time Clock

The board also has a built in RTC which you can power with a two pin connector to a coin cell battery. This is fantastic for projects that require time and date but may not have Internet access to set the clock on each boot. Very welcome addition.

Others

There is also a dedicated fan header for connecting PWM fans to (the new Raspberry Pi 5 official case will come with a fan included). And a dedicated UART header for making debugging simple.

It should also be noted that the Pi uses less power than it’s predecessor but they sell a beefier 5v 5A power supply with USB-PD support to allow for overclockers and also to provide increased power to the USB ports if you wish to run more power hungry peripherals.

Conclusion

Overall this is a fantastic upgrade to the Pi 4, which was an amazing single board computer. The speed difference will be very noticeable and I think this firmly puts the Raspberry Pi 5 into the realm of being a perfectly good daily computer for most normal users.

The Raspberry Pi 5 will be available at launch in 4GB and 8GB flavours priced at $60 and $80 respectively. They can be pre-ordered now and will ship on 20th October 2023.

Do I need one? No, I have many Pis already.
Will I be ordering one? Almost certainly.

And I will continue to until someone starts Pi Users Anonymous so I can get some help!