Ralnarene
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While viewing and reading about Cyberpunk 2077 when a trailer came out in 2019, someone mentioned the concept of “rockers” as a class in the pen and paper RPG.
I’m a fan of deckers in cyberpunk, and got the idea of playing a decker in an RPG who hides in plain sight as a musician, with his deck roughly disguised as the most 80s of instruments, a keytar. The idea is that after ending a run with security on your tail you could dive into the crowded city streets and pass yourself off as just another musician in on the street, at least from a distance.
Then I realized I could probably build one.
I do like my electronics, and I have a 3D printer and modelling software for custom components, so, why the hell not? (And no, I'm not actually gonna hack anything, I'm just building this because I can. and it looks cool)
I knew I’d start with a raspberry pi as the computer in it, and searched to find an appropriate keytar to gut and convert into a cyberdeck. Eventually I found a Rock Band 3 keytar controller at a thrift store, which seemed the perfect portable size.
After a lot of 3D modelling, 3D printing, painting, modifying the case, etc, I’ve made a lot of progress on it. Right now it doesn’t do much more than exist as an odd raspberry pi casemod, but it is portable.
The tray opens for access to the internals, and removing the wireless keyboard for charging.
A look at the internals. I'm currently running this off of the power bank in the middle, which I've mounted on velcro command strips in case i need to pull it out to check the battery level. The cable coiled in the lower left is for plugging the bank in for charging while leaving it in the case. I store a stylus under it for the touchscreen. The SD cards in the upper left are for swapping out if I accidentally corrupt a card while out and about, and I can swap in a duplicate install. Down the line I might start carrying different distros on spare cards for different tasks. I keep a thumb drive in there in case I need to transfer files.
Also, to fit with the theme, I have a belt amp that plugs into it (I had to add an adapter) for me to play MP3s out of it, so I guess it’s a really inefficient MP3 player, but it also fits the original concept.
I'm still working on getting a VR VNC to work with an old android smartphone of mine to emulate a much larger screen through a smartphone VR headset, but I haven't managed to make it work yet. I also want to run the connection through a curly USB wired connection once I figure out how to do it.
The work never ends. It still need to finish painting and stickering it, finding/building peripherals, etc. The power switch needs to get incorporated into the case and not just dangle out of it. At some point I'd like to find a use for the button and capacitive touch sensor on the handle, but that is waaaay down the priority list.... the list goes on and on as I learn or think of more things.
You can find the full logging of my cyberdeck build on my blog, my landing page for the keytar is here: https://technomancers-sanctum.blog/keytar-cyberdeck/
If you would like to view my blog in general, here it is:
https://technomancers-sanctum.blog/
My STLs are posted on Thingiverse, here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3880609
Warning: I am not sure if all these files are up-to-date and fit. If you use these files you may find that they don't fit precisely. I know the connectors between pieces are loose, but there was also a bit where I was iterating quickly and didn't document well.
Okaybutseriously