The Outlander Cyberdeck

Much to my dismay, I failed to find any PCBs on the internet that would serve to adapt the Q20 keyboard to pins suitable for prototyping. However, the Q20 is a component of the Solder Party Q20 handheld keyboard, which has all the hardware schematics in KiCAD format here. I was able to extract the symbol and footprint info from this schematic, save it, and build the following below. As this was my first experience with KiCAD, it took about six hours (lol) to figure out how precisely to get this to work. The secret was redoing the symbol with all pins, even the hidden ones, connected to a 1x20 pin connector on either side.

Once all that was done, it was simply a matter of organizing the footprints and cutting the board into some sort of compatible shape. I separated the two columns of pins by 17.5 mm, which should provide 1 or 2 breadboard connections per pin (the pins should go into the third hole from the center of each row). I ordered the board through OSH Park (www.oshpark.com), 3 for 10. They look pretty good too! I added the KiCAD files for anyone who wants to order them.

I feel the first step is to get the core components working: that means the Orange Pi, the keyboard and its associated microprocessor, and the display breadboarded and functional. To this end, I ordered the necessary components to begin. One problem I already see is the keyboard connector: it's surface mount only, and I can't find a breakout board for that style of connector. I may need to design and order my first custom boards for this application. I'm going to spend a few days looking around the internet before I commit to that course of action.

The intent for this device is to be a functional pocket terminal/phone made with off the shelf parts. I'd also like it to have some interesting features, such as built-in LoRa capabilities, an IR blaster, and GPIO ports for modules. Finally, I'd like a Linux OS over an Android, as I feel I'll use the increased features of Raspbian over Android. That may make for some annoying programming, but I can always dual-boot the device if I really need to.

The core of the device will be an Orange Pi Zero 2 W 4 GB system, which is a lol-worthy Raspberry Pi knockoff. The hope is that 4 GB of RAM will let me use this as an actual pocket terminal, as I know I've had functional laptops with that amount of RAM. Depending on early prototyping results I may ditch this board for an official Raspberry Pi Nano.

The Q20 keyboard device contains a trackball sensor and three soft buttons in addition to the Q10 keyboard keys. This choice was made obviously for the phone buttons and the trackpad. I plan to drive the keyboard with an ATmega328P-PU MCU running qmk firmware.

The graphical display is a 240x320 resolution color LCD. Nothing fancy, but should interface with the Orange Pi fairly easily. This may change radically if the screen is too small (I'm bad with dimensions in my head).

WiFi and Bluetooth will be handled by the Orange Pi board. I've selected a global 4G LTE cat4 modem, which has 150/50 Mbps up and down across all LTE bands (I think?). I also want to include a LoRa transceiver, mostly for show but also to tinker with low power HF applications, as well as a row of GPIO female pins on the top of the device for modular expansions (sensors, radios, etc.). Finally, I'd like to include an IR blaster, again mostly for its own sake but as a handy utility.