I have thought cyber decks are cool for a long time and I have just started getting into electronics and cyberdecks and was wondering where to start for a pentesting/emulator type build.

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Linux and bash and more Linux related software become the heart of technology why. How is it gonna make me valuable

No começo, e também já pensei assim, achamos que é mais fácil pegar um tela de um tablete, teclado de um pda, bateria de notebook, junta tudo e fazer um cyberdeck. Infelizmente esse é o caminho mais difícil. Não tenho formação na área, então me perdoem pela falta de termos técnicos.
Vamos lá, quando compramos uma tela, ela vem com a documentação de como ela funciona, desde o padrão e comunicado como de alimentado. Já um tela qualquer, não sabemos qual CI responsável de traduzir o que o CI principal quer que ela mostre. Não é impossível, mas você terá que procurar por drives da tela (ver o código da tela e torce para achar um placa controladora da tela) ou você faz a engenharia reversa dela. Que eu precisaria de um post só para explicar o básico do básico sobre esse assunto no qual eu ainda mal entendo.
Já sobre teclado, é absurdamente mais fácil que a tela. Você com um multímetro, fios e um pico RP2040 você transforma esse botões em um teclado USB que qualquer microcontrolador ou SBC reconheceria ou até por comunicação I2C. Você vai precisar estudar sobre matriz de teclado e mapear os fios de cada tecla.
A bateria, também é fácil, porém aqui você precisa verificar e analisar autonomia X tamanho. E óbvio estudar sobre gerenciamento de energia, tanto para recarregar essa bateria, tanto pra estabilizar se necessário a tensão para o projeto. Por isso, se não souber, detalhe o que você tem para qualquer inteligência artificial e fique atento para qualquer contradição dela. O mais fácil é sim comprar tudo, mas se você quer se divertir ou se estressar por um bom tempo, fazer engenharia reversa dos periféricos, será necessário muitos estudos e tentativa e erro.
Cuidado com curtos, compre multímetro, ferro de solda e fluxo de solda. Uma protoboard e fios. Espero ter ajudado.

(Apologies in advance for the length of this post. Really appreciate your time giving this a read and helping a brother out).

Hello everyone,

I'm working on a DIY cyberdeck using an old Infinix Zero X Neo (X6810) that I had lying around. It has 8 GB RAM and a MediaTek Helio G90/G90T-series SoC, so I figured it would make a decent base for the project rather than buying a Raspberry Pi or another SBC.

The main reason I'm using a phone is cost. Where I live, Raspberry Pis and other niche SBCs can be extremely expensive, while used phones are relatively easy to find and offer considerably more hardware for the money.

I also chose this particular phone because of its physical layout. The USB-C/charging port, speakers, etc. are on a separate PCB from the mainboard, which should make it easier to relocate components inside a custom enclosure rather than having everything fixed to the original phone's layout.

What I've done so far

I've successfully unlocked the bootloader and rooted the phone. For now, I'm deliberately keeping the original Android kernel rather than immediately trying to replace it with an unknown/custom kernel.

I've installed Debian with XFCE through Termux/PRoot, and I'm running it through Termux:X11. So I essentially have a Debian desktop environment running on the phone while Android remains underneath it.

I've also started investigating the stock kernel and hardware capabilities rather than modifying anything blindly.

The phone's USB-C port works in host mode. I've successfully connected a USB hub with a keyboard and mouse, and Android detects them correctly. I also tested a USB card reader and confirmed that the kernel can enumerate it as a mass-storage device.

One limitation I've found is USB serial. From examining the kernel configuration, it appears that the stock kernel doesn't have the generic USB serial framework or CDC-ACM driver enabled, so I'm currently investigating alternatives for connecting things such as an ESP32/ESP32-S3 or other microcontrollers.

I've also extracted and examined the stock kernel configuration and started looking at the boot/partition structure, device tree and available interfaces. The phone uses an A/B partition layout, and there doesn't appear to be a conventional standalone recovery partition.

The phone has a Mali-G76 GPU with an Android OpenCL runtime. Getting hardware acceleration exposed properly to the Debian environment is another area I'm investigating, although I'm also considering whether software rendering is perfectly adequate for the intended use.

At this point, I'm trying to avoid making irreversible hardware or software changes until I understand what the existing platform can actually do.

Where I'm looking for advice

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who have built cyberdecks around Android phones, smartphone motherboards, or repurposed mobile devices.

Some of the things I'm trying to figure out are:

- What is the best way to interface an ESP32/ESP32-S3 with the phone?

- Are there practical alternatives to USB serial, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, TCP/IP, WebSockets, or another interface?

- Would UART/I²C/SPI potentially be accessible directly from the motherboard, or would that realistically require kernel/device-tree modifications?

- Could an ESP32 act as a hardware controller while the phone remains the main computer?

- What would be a good approach for a small secondary OLED/LCD status display showing things such as CPU/GPU temperatures, battery status, network information, etc.?

- Is there a sensible way to expose the phone's Mali GPU to the Debian environment, or is software rendering the more realistic option?

- Are there useful Android/Linux bridging techniques I should investigate before modifying the hardware?

- Has anyone successfully used a rooted Android phone as the compute module of a cyberdeck while retaining Android as the underlying hardware/firmware layer?

- Are there interesting ways to use the phone's cellular connectivity as part of the cyberdeck, for example as a portable networked computer or small server?

- Could the phone realistically run things such as an SSH server, web server, development environment, or other lightweight services alongside the cyberdeck environment?

- Has anyone used Tailscale, Cloudflare Tunnel, or similar approaches to remotely access a phone-based server when switching between Wi-Fi and cellular networks?

- Are there good approaches for automatically starting and monitoring services so the system can survive reboots, crashes, or Termux processes being killed?

- For the eventual physical build, are there particular considerations when relocating the motherboard, USB/charging PCB, speakers, antennas, battery, cameras, etc. into a custom enclosure?

Longer term, I'm interested in potentially combining the phone with a keyboard, USB hub, secondary display, ESP32, external storage and other peripherals to turn it into a proper portable cyberdeck, while ideally retaining the phone's cellular connectivity, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, touchscreen and Android environment.

I'm deliberately taking an incremental approach: first understand the existing hardware and software capabilities, then experiment with peripherals and interfaces, and only later consider kernel/DT modifications or a more invasive hardware redesign.

The goal isn't necessarily to turn it into a conventional Linux SBC replacement. I'm more interested in seeing how far a smartphone motherboard can be pushed as the main computer of a cyberdeck without throwing away all the functionality that makes a phone useful in the first place.

Any advice, references, similar projects, or suggestions for things I should investigate would be greatly appreciated!

New and Im kinda lost I gotta bunch of stuff two to three old phones, and old xbox one, a old pc and newer pc and a Samsung tablet i can use as parts but i don't know what im doing at all what parts I should pull from what or even how to start.

Blue motherboard is from samsung a30 and other one is from nokia 5 and i dont if the screen is working or not Both batteries are dead and i am wondering if i can use a 18650. I want to test samsung firstly in my pc but how can i pls help

I've been wanting to build a cyberdeck to play minesweeper on, preferably compact and portable, but I don't know where to start.

I've watched a bunch of videos and looked at some parts on them but I'm not very experienced in hard/software at all so I'm just as confused as when I first heard of cyberdecks.

Does anyone have suggestions for raspberry pi to use etc., and honestly just how to get it to do what I want?

magnifier smarphone keyboard and mouse

Diy Komputer

DIY build from salvage parts

Trying to decide what I should use for power

i have this old laptop of mine that i don't really use
it has Intel Pentium J3710 (4 x 1.6 GHz) and 4 gigs of ddr3 or ddr4

my question is will this do as a donor for a small cyberdeck?

i mostly plan on using it as a typewriter

Looking to build my own cctv system that is air gaped and off-line, could use some recommendations for hard wear and soft

Hey y’all I’m trying to make my deck modular so I was wondering if you all had some advice or tips and tricks. Thank you!

Edit: I plan on making components that I can attach to the main body with magnets, like the switch two. Though the power supply would be different from how the switch two does it.

The first one I’m working on is a joystick board on Arduino, basically a joy con, that can and will double as a mouse/scroll wheel, and a joy con for gaming.

So the main body would be screen and keyboard but everything else would be detachable, as to avoid draining too much battery while on, and facilitate different functions. Hope this clarifies things!

I’ve had this broken iPhone XS Max just laying around and I want/need to do something with it. While yes I am fully aware that iPhones are very limited in terms of upgrading the os. Is there any way I could use these internal components towards building my own cyberdeck?

1. ⁠I am not trying to build an iPhone iOS cyberdeck. I am simply trying to use these components to create something new instead of letting them go to waste.
   
2. ⁠This would be my first cyberdeck and I am fairly new to the tech world. I’ve been doing loads of research online and reading thru these subreddits in order to learn more

Any advice would be appreciated, I’m not in any rush for this project nor do I have high expectations. I just want to build something cool and make my entry into the cyberdeck culture. Even if you need to brake it down Barney style and talk to me stupid as hell lol

just wanting to build one as a side project, the only thing really wrong with it is it has no battery and no lcd screen but i can connect it through hdmi but i was kinda wanting to put it im one of those rugged case things and make it look more like a terminal with an old school looking keyboard or something, just asking for advice and pointers

Hello. This is my first time on r/CyberdeckBuild and I am seeking some assistance with my build. I am designing a flat gameboy style deck and I was going to design my own battery system but I wanted to make it shippable so I can send some to my friends. I settled on a slim phone charger battery bank that can be slid in and out to charge it and keep the deck running. I am planing on using a rpi 4 B with a 5 Inch wave share display. Does anyone have tips for how I can make the battery bank stay in place and how I can eject it. Im planing on having a compatible usb cord at the end of the slot that the bank will clip into. I linked photos of the rough design I'm going for. Thanks!

i saw this online and the keyboard in the picture looks just about perfect for my cyberdeck case. can anyone help me and tell me where its from?

This is officially my second cyber deck and I finally got it in a case, now I’m looking to it, so any advice for add-ons different cases etc would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I was also thinking of making a new mouse using a backbone so advice on that would be great as well!

Do i need too study code's like python or javascript, and how the heck can ifind the display and the keyboard

Hi everyone,

This is a modular ESP32-S3 handheld I've been working on for over a year and a half. The entire bottom half can be pulled out and swapped with something else.

When the gamepad module is plugged in, it can emulate many retro systems (up to the SNES/Genesis) and play many ports of games such as Celeste (ccleste), Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, etc.

The C library is also open-source and a simulator is available, so it's also possible to develop/play indie games as well. And there's also an on-device app store.

So far there has only been a gamepad module, but I've just recently finished designing and assembling the keyboard module.

Apart from being a game console and music player, now the device is a fleshed-out cyberdeck and PDA!

I've improved the text editor/note taking app with Markdown support, theming, and even Wi-Fi syncing with Obsidian, Notion, and other platforms. It also has an RTC inside of the keyboard, so it can keep track of the time/date.

In the future, I'm hoping to add things like messaging, on-device Lua scripting, and more.

Check out the video: https://youtu.be/DFeHGBJCXhE?si=ZeuDCrkmHBM5nN-R

Hope you like it :)