Pseudonymous HackberryPi creator “Zitao” has delivered on a promise, made earlier this year, to design yet another Raspberry Pi-powered handheld system — this time shrinking the dimensions a little by moving from the Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer to the more compact Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 computer-on-module.
“The HackberryPi_CM5 project is a Raspberry Pi Compute Module SBC (single board computer)-powered handheld computer with [the] reuse of original keyboard from old Blackberry phones,” its creator explains. “The goal of the project is to create a portable Linux-powered computer that lets the user gain a deeper understanding of Linux and explore the architecture of hardware, software, and the Linux kernel.”
The HackberryPi is back, this time in a slimmer, aluminum-cased Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 flavor. (📷: ZitaoTech)
The new model, brought to our attention by Liliputing, comes after the unveiling of the Hackberry 5 — or “HackyPi 5” — back in February: a handheld with square-format 3.95″ 720×720 touchscreen display above a choice from two upcycled BlackBerry smartphone keyboards. “I’m also developing the CM5 version [of the handheld],” Zitao said at the time — and three months on, he has now delivered on that promise.
This time around, the upper and lower parts of the case are made from aluminum with a 3D-printed spacing framework between them. A custom carrier board hosts the builder’s choice of Raspberry Pi 5 modules, breaking out a full-size HDMI port, two USB 3.0 ports, a Stemma QT connector for external hardware, a microSD Card slot, amplified audio, and providing connectivity to the keyboard, display, and an M.2 2240 slot for Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) storage or a machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) accelerator module.
The housing hides a custom carrier board that breaks out all the essentials, including a PCIe M.2 slot. (📷: ZitaoTech)
Fitted with a 5Ah lithium-polymer battery, Zitao — a master’s student of mechanical engineering and industrial design at the Technical University of Dresden — estimates that the device can run for around five hours idling at the desktop, dropping to three–four hours under typical usage. For those who need more, there’s a magnet at the back compatible with iPhone-style MagSafe power banks — though they need to be wired into the device, and don’t charge it wirelessly.
Zitao has listed three variants of the HackberryPi_CM5 on Elecrow, though at the time of writing all were showing as out of stock; design files for the device have been released on GitHub under the permissive MIT license.