Bee Write Back is a DIY distraction-free writing machine with OLED display and mechanical keyboard

The Bee Write Back is a writerDeck that combines a 5.5 inch AMOLED display with a small mechanical keyboard, a battery, and a few other odds and ends. It uses a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for brains, and designed shmimel says the total cost of materials is about $200 (not including 3D printing costs).

Designed to offer a distraction-free writing experience, the writerDeck is an open source project: shmimel has published a build guide and design files on GitHub, and today released a six minute video showing the build process.

While this little device is designed first and foremost for writing, the hardware actually makes it a pretty versatile little computer.

The screen is a 5.5 inch, 1280 x 720 pixel display AMOLED display with up to 300 nits brightness. While it’s a bit small for a PC display, it should be able to handle video, games, or other graphics as well as the text-based documents you’d expect from a writerDeck.

And with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W inside, the system should support Raspberry Pi OS and other lightweight Linux distributions.

But with a 40% sized mechanical keyboard featuring a YMD Air40 PCB, 48 Gateron switches, and a set of 48 keycaps, the keyboard accounts for about 40% of the component costs, so this thing is clearly designed for writing.

The design is customizable: you can easily change the keyboard layout to meet your needs. And while the 3D-printed case is designed to accommodate the Raspberry Pi, display, battery, keyboard, cables, and other adapters, folks with a bit of know-how should be able to tweak the design to make room for different displays, keyboards, or single-board computers. Shmimel says it should also be possible to modify the design so that the screen can tilt forward, something that the original build does not do.

via /r/writerDeck (1)(2)