A few months back I came across the cyberdeck concept created by Jay Doscher (@back7.co): https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-recovery-kit
I knew as soon as I saw it that I needed to make one. After a few month of collecting the parts I needed I got to work and some research including work by Evan Meaney (https://www.evanmeaney.com/_recpi.html). I was ready to go.
A lot of what I did is easily covered in the links above, and I wanted to take this time to give an overview of what I did to make my survival cyberdeck unique. A detailed in depth look at the build itself will come at some point in the future.
A note: The Division and associated logos are all from the Ubisoft, and should be considered copyrighted and trademarked as such.
So, on to the tour of my "The Division" themed survival cyberdeck!
On my gun safe sits a box with the "SHD" logo.
The inside of this box is wrapped in copper and grounded, the purpose here is to protect against solar flare / EMP damage (should that be the end of the world scenario at hand), and it contains a Pelican case which is watertight and relatively impact resistant. I chose an OD (Olive Drab) as the primary color, the same as most of my survival/camping gear.
Upon opening the case you are greeted by the Cyberdeck, a Raspberry Pi based computer, 7 inch touchscreen, a 5 port network switch, control panel, and keyboard.
The Control Panel has (from left to right)
1) USB inputs to for external power and battery charging
2) A switch between the sources of power to the deck itself.
3) Individual power switches for the RaspberryPi, display, and network switch.
4) Audio port.
5) 6 pin Milspec connector.
6) 3 usb peripheral device slots.
7) An ethernet port.
There is also a USB-C lead to the keyboard, just under the power selector, as to not take up available USB slots, and maximize efficiency of space on the panel. The lettering on this panel used glow in the dark filament, so it stands out even in low light.
Other goodies are included in the tray:
1) A power adapter and 6 foot USB cable to provide external power or charge the battery.
2) A 6 inch ethernet cable to connect the cyberdeck to it's own switch (this allows the cyberdeck to run as a web server to other devices).
3) A USB microphone, which is currently not all that useful, but I hope to eventually provide some kind of translator software on the deck.
4) A USB GPS device, which allows for geolocation on the mapping software I have installed.
5) A Corsair "Stealth" USB drive which houses entertainment (music, films, etc), as I didn't want to take up valuable space on the deck's on board storage for luxury items.
Upon setting the appropriate switches, (currently set on battery power to the Pi and the screen), the deck will power on and boot, and you are soon greeted by the SHD logo once again; this is auto logged into the "cyberdeck" user.
From here you can access everything contained in the deck, nearly 500 GB of information and mapping, by touching either the GPS Icon, or the Knowledge Base Icon.
The GPS software is FoxtrotGPS (I changed the launcher logo to match the aesthetic of the deck). It includes mapping at various zoom levels for the whole United States which I had to side-load.
Not only does it have mapping data down to street level...
But it also has Satellite imagery, all without the need for external internet connection.
The Knowledge Base opens up a local host web server with this landing page. The first link it to a Kiwix based Wiki backup, the next 3 links are informational repositories for all kinds of subjects, and the final link is reference for the multi-layer keyboard layout (as the keyboard itself is physically limited)
Here are the Kiwix wikis, All of Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, and Wiki Voyage as general knowledge. It also has Arch Wiki and Raspberry Pi SE as a way to help self reference what you'd need to know to admin the computer itself. And, I also included a gardening stack exchange as a more general reference for agricultural topics.
The second link is the entirety of the PoleShift library. I don't really buy into the whole apocalyptic Pole Shift concept, but this is one of the best curated repositories for all kinds of useful information, mainly PDFs.
The next link is an even larger repository, the Survivor Library. This alone is nearly 120 GB of PDFs.
Finally, some details that I particularly like is regarding the "The Division" theme. I changed the menu icon to an orange circle (like that on many of The Divisions's gear; the watch and ISAC brick), with the logo for the Cyberdeck sfotware being the "Survivor" logo from the game. I also set the keyboard LEDs to glow orange to match the color scheme.
Overall this was a fun project to put together, Jay's original design, with modifications provided by Evan, and the changes I made for myself, really challenged and stretched my skills in 3D modeling, 3D printing, electrical wiring, and Linux.
A lot had to be done to make all of this come together, and I could talk about it in detail. But that is something for another day...
This blog post was written by ConciousDoom, in some instances another username may be referenced as "ThomasTyndan" an older screen name.