Want a pocket Linux computer that looks nothing like the black slab everyone else carries? Maker Huy Vector answered that by wrapping a Raspberry Pi 5 in a hand-bent brass frame, and the result is part cyberdeck, part jewelry.
The build skips the usual acrylic or resin shell for brass tubes formed into a skeleton that holds every part in place. Inside sits a Raspberry Pi 5, a 4-inch touchscreen fed over HDMI, an M5Stack CardKB thumb keyboard, a speaker, and a small cooling fan. Three 18650 lithium cells, a charging module, and a capacity sensor keep it running away from a wall outlet. None of the parts are exotic, which is exactly what makes it a good weekend or capstone project.
How the pieces talk to each other
The 4-inch panel connects through the Pi 5 micro-HDMI port, so you skip any display driver library entirely. The CardKB is the clever bit: it rides on the I2C bus, using only the SDA and SCL pins plus 3.3V and ground, which frees up the rest of the GPIO header and both USB ports for other add-ons. Enable I2C in raspi-config, then confirm the keyboard shows up at address 0x5F with i2cdetect before you solder anything permanent. The three 18650 cells sit at roughly 3.7V each, and the capacity sensor reports remaining charge so you are not guessing when the Pi will brown out mid-session.
Try it yourself
Vector published step-by-step instructions and a build video, including how to get the CardKB running on Raspberry Pi OS. If bending brass feels intimidating, wire the electronics on a breadboard first, confirm the screen and keyboard respond, then move everything into the frame. Read the full write-up on Hackster, grab a Raspberry Pi 5 and a set of protected 18650 cells at circuit.rocks, and you can have a one-of-a-kind Linux handheld finished by Sunday.
Originally published on blog.circuit.rocks.
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