That's neat looking, but it really strikes me as a kind of cosplay than anything that would actually be useful in any kind of disaster situation:
1. If you're off the grid, where are you going to get power to run this?
2. If there's no power grid or internet, you probably have much bigger problems than "how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia." Those problems would probably last longer than you want to schlep around and item like this.
3. I'm not under the impression that Raspberry Pi's are especially durable, though the SD-card storage is probably the weakest link (though both those things probably have benefits of being common things that allow for the scavenging of replacement parts).
4. If you need to protect from an EMP, I don't think "tinfoil lined cardboard box" will be sufficient. I was reading up on that a couple of months ago when the war started, and it sounds like little gaps in the shielding can seriously compromise the effectiveness of the sheilding.
5. Mil-spec connectors look cool, but if you need to use something like this, you'll probably want connectors that are a common as possible. A connector is useless if you don't have anything to plug into it. Some kind of terminal block would probably make more sense. Using a male connector seems like a particularly fatal flaw (if you used female, you'd at least be able to stick wires in the holes in a pinch).
If you want to usefully prepare for any doomsday scenario, you probably need to really carefully think about your actual requirements in that scenario, and then build to those requirements. IMHO, if it's an actual doomsday, it's probably safe to assume technological society will collapse and not recover for generations, and any high technology would in reality be a short-to-medium term consumable that will break without replacement.
> how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia." Those problems would probably last longer than you want to schlep around and item like this.
Which is why you download offline Wikipedia before the disaster. I know "preppers" have a bad rap for cos-playing, but this project strikes me as the tech equivalent of "Prepare an emergency go bag,and buy some tarp to seal your windows and doors in case of a shelter-in-place order[1]". Sure, buying your gear/rations from an Army Surplus store is cos-playey (as is the EMP shielding), but the principle is sound.
> IMHO, if it's an actual doomsday, it's probably safe to assume technological society will collapse and not recover for generations, and any high technology would in reality be a short-to-medium term consumable that will break without replacement.
I suspect you're overthinking it - this is a computing equivalent of a go bag, not a nuclear bunker. Having offline useful information will be useful from day 0 (maps, emergency frequencies, agricultural & disease info, for example). The RPi has no moving parts and can run for years: my 1st-gen pi is chugging along just fine.
> Which is why you download offline Wikipedia before the disaster.
You misunderstand. I'm saying that browsing a downloaded copy of Wikipedia is a counterproductive waste of time in a disaster. Investing effort into making sure you'll be able to access Wikipedia at all times in even the most dire of circumstances is probably having your priorities out of whack. It's like a kid packing for a trip by filling their bag with toys.
> I suspect you're overthinking it
No, I'm questioning some of the fundamental assumptions that would cause one to construct a device like this for anything besides cyberpunk cosplay.
> but this project strikes me as the tech equivalent of "Prepare an emergency go bag,and buy some tarp to seal your windows and doors in case of a shelter-in-place order[1]
> this is a computing equivalent of a go bag
It's like the exercise-equipment equivalent of a go bag, or the kitchen-gadget equivalent of a go bag (e.g. the kind of thing that shouldn't be in a go bag in the first place).
I think the idea that this is for anything but cosplay is the result of tech people fallaciously believing their most familiar tools (i.e. general purpose computers) will always be useful, and therefore making elaborate plans to preserve their access in situations where their PC will be as obsolete as a buggy whips.
> Having offline useful information will be useful from day 0 (maps, emergency frequencies, agricultural & disease info, for example).
Even assuming that is so, I think a bulky mains-powered PC is not anything close to the right tool to provide any of that. It would be about 1000x better to have compact amount of judiciously-selected paper reference material, augmented with a kindle with an appropriate selection of eBooks if you must be less judicious.
Wikipedia tends to be pretty high-level, i.e. focus more on people, events, general principles, high-level summaries of how things are and their history. But in case of a societal collapse, wouldn't that be kinda useless? Not sure what specific pieces of literature you'd want to have on your emergency hand crank emp-shielded Kindle, but I'd expect more hands-on material would be preferable, i.e. material that tells you how to make and do certain practical things and the right technique and relevant caveats.
I think that information about topics ranging from plants, agriculture, medicine, chemistry, mechanics, historical technology would be really valuable.
My previous comment is somewhat overstated. Instructional material on fashioning and using specific survival tools or accomplishing survival-essential tasks would be really important!
> An offline copy of wikipedia would be the next most important thing to membership in a community.
It would definitely not be. You're taking Wikipedia marketing waaay too literally. It's not the "sum of all human knowledge," it's a flawed collection of Cliff Notes for some of it. A roomful of undergraduate textbooks (or the equivalent eBooks) would be about 100 times better than Wikipedia as a foundation for knowledge, but neither would be very helpful in solving urgent, practical survival problems.
I can agree with the device being too bulky. However, if it survives EMP and your smartphone obviously doesn't, it will win against any kind of paper you can carry hands down. If it has offline openstreetmap, wikipedia and other literature - such as medical reference, geodesic data, books on how to prepare shelter, cook food in extreme conditions, craft materials, etc. then it is an extremely useful device.
I still think it should be 5x as compact and support charging from a solar cell while staying watertight, but the premise is solid.
p.s.: how to evaluate usefulness - imagine you're trapped in Azovsteel and have no internet but access to sunlight, supplies are slowly running out and you need to learn how to better treat water so it can be consumed, treat wounds and repair equipment - if you have a device prepared for this, it raises your chances of survival.
p.p.s.: IRL, however, defenders and civilians in Azovsteel have ways to procure electricity which allows them to use Starlink so everyday smartphones work quite well.
> if it survives EMP and your smartphone obviously doesn't
Wouldn't it be much easier to shield a smartphone? Those are much more compact after all. You can buy foil-lined pouches that are intended for preventing mobile devices from connecting to the network that might work against an EMP as well – at least as well as the device from TFA, which from the picture appears to have a rather large gap where both halves connect.
> Even assuming that is so, I think a bulky mains-powered PC is not anything close to the right tool to provide any of that.
I must ask: did you read the article? It's about a 5V system with a Raspberry pi in a case with an official raspberry pi screen packaged in a water-tight container with a custom keyboard - not too far off from a kindle, just with room for a battery/power bank. Add a modest 50W solar panel, and you have better data-density and durability than a stack of paper.
> better data-density and durability than a stack of paper
Eh, what? Paper has survived for hundreds if not thousands of years. Show me your RPi 1000 years for now, next to an equally old bible, and we'll chat again. (Not a religious argument, the bible is just an example.)
Edit: Make it 100 years from now, the effects should be obviously already at that point.
> Eh, what? Paper has survived for hundreds if not thousands of years. Show me your RPi 1000 years for now
If my RPi has a long chain of monasteries taking care of it and making new copies every few decades, I will have more than a few RPis to show you. I think paper is an extreme example of survivorship bias: how much of it was preserved vs the total amount that was produced. If you want durability, go with clay tablets, or carving on rocks (but you're trading off against data density)
> Is the bible printed on lambskin parchment? If not, the paper probably dissolved.
Even the lowest quality paper can easily last 50 years when stored in acceptable conditions. IIRC, they've even recovered 2000 year old readable papyrus from ancient garbage dumps in Egypt.
And SD card (especially a high-density one) will almost certainly fail with catastrophic data loss before a decade or two, if not sooner.
> 1. If you're off the grid, where are you going to get power to run this?
There are many sources of off-grid power. Solar, wind, hydro being the big three.
> 2. If there's no power grid or internet, you probably have much bigger problems than "how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia." Those problems would probably last longer than you want to schlep around and item like this.
> There are many sources of off-grid power. Solar, wind, hydro being the big three.
Agreed, but that's the kind of thing that should be one of the first things you think about in these scenarios with powered electronics, and it wasn't treated here at all.
>> 2. If there's no power grid or internet, you probably have much bigger problems than "how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia." Those problems would probably last longer than you want to schlep around and item like this.
> s/Wikipedia/GIS
So let's say you have a reasonable doomsday requirement for maps. Why this thing, and not some paper maps? Or a kindle loaded with a bunch of street atlases?
I feel like you're looking at this from wrong perspective. It's not "how can this <thing> meet a requirement, but "what (combination of) things can best meet my requirements." The former will weigh you down with lot of albatrosses, the later may give you a usable toolkit.
>Agreed, but that's the kind of thing that should be one of the first things you think about in these scenarios with powered electronics, and it wasn't treated here at all.
If you wish to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Of course, any discussion involving off grid power would involve a symposium on the chemistry of photovoltaic cells, an introduction to EM physics and silicon manufacturing.
Or just assume someone will figure out they need a solar pack from REI.
Yeah, if there are equivalents for cheaper elsewhere, I understand. But I trust the brands that are sold there, and the return policy, so the premium is worth it for someone who can (a) afford it and (b) will use the product.
Have tried to buy paper maps lately? I have and was surprise how hard they are to get for many places. On the other hand I had copies to google screen shots for most places I want.
I still have my Thomas Guide from the 90s in my car. Looks like Thomas Guides are limited to LA and San Diego only nowadays, but it's not going away soon: "California state legislation says that every police and fire vehicle must have a Thomas Guide on board. Fire roads often aren’t on GPS, and ambulances can’t get lost, as every second could be life-saving. They often buy laminated copies too, as they get so beat up.” (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-12-07/...)
> Have tried to buy paper maps lately? I have and was surprise how hard they are to get for many places. On the other hand I had copies to google screen shots for most places I want.
Actually, yeah. You can send away for them for free for most US states. Though it does seem like city street atlases aren't much of a thing anymore.
I can't think of the last time I thought about a Mapsco book. Actually, the most recent reference was a few weeks ago when I was rewatching The Wire which the particular episode was shot in 2006 or 2007. Mapsco was probably on it's way out by then. GoogMaps was out in 2005, so MapQuest and others were even available before then. (wow, mapquest was available online in '96)
> "how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia."
I would like a source (1) low power, E-ink book readers with (2) an SD card slot that can handle large cards, and ideally (3) open to hacking.
This is a very small set, possibly zero. All of the android readers are ruled out because it's power overkill just to get bits off a card to flip an e-ink screen and then go back to zero power for days or weeks. There used to be some readers with SD slots but those are often limited to 32 gig. And I want (3) in case the reader doesn't handle the formats I want.
Such a machine /would/ be an offline, after civilization goes away machine. You'd want wikipedia, emergency medical handbook, plant identification books, etc etc.
PineNote is looking good, but it's not ready yet - crucially, it's lacking in proper power management firmware, so it eats through batteries right now.
SD cards have short retention lifetimes (5-10 years under optimal conditions when new, even less with wear), and therefore are undesirable as a component of a "after civilization goes away machine".
You could honestly just start with this design, remove a few things, add an eInk display, use some other form of storage than SD cards for the Pi (since SD cards are notoriously indurable), and have exactly what you want. You'd probably need some custom display writing code and have to write some custom X/Wayland app that draws to the eInk screen. The idle power draw of the Pi is tiny and as long as you avoid writing to the screen with any frequency, it can probably stay alive for decades. (Though whether a Pi can last that long is a good question.)
I'm curious where OP got that idea from too. Compared to full blown PCs sure the idle power draw is tiny, but it will still drain an average powerbank in a few days at most.
You could fully shut down the Pi (which would require some external hardware or user input to wake it up again) but even then compared to usual low power electronics drawing microamps in deep sleep, the milliamps the Pi slurps up is a lot. It would probably last a few weeks, maybe months in this state, but it would also take 30+ seconds to boot every time you need to do anything.
Wikipedia printed in the most compact form could be a really useful book. Obviously it can't have everything, but I wonder what such a book could look like.
The problem is that Wikipedia's policy prohibits howto information. You can get a chunk of theory out of it, but not practical instructions.
I don't know the reasoning behind it, but it makes Wikipedia significantly less useful for this particular use case than it might otherwise be. WikiBooks might fill the gap in some areas, but it's just not got as wide coverage.
“ The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm”
Is a fun read. It seriously considers these questions and talks about practical things, like how to salvage iron ore from scrap rather than having to resort to mining it initially.
In the short term, I think a mobile phone with an offline copy would probably be fine. You can buy something with a large amount of storage (you need 100 gig or so for offline wiki with images), is fully waterproof, more portable and can be EMP shielded in a metal box easily. Charging is also easy with a small panel and a power bank.
You can also store offline open street map (OSMand) and you have GPS built in, though in the apocalypse that would stop working eventually too. I think they would actually keep transmitting (it'd make sense from a military perspective) but eventually they'd lose station-keeping ability if they don't get orbital corrections from a ground station.
The main problem you'll have is that mobile apps and OSs tend to do weird things if they're offline for an appreciable length of time. Lots of things randomly stop working because caches become invalidated. Anything that requires a login or an app that tries to update (and fails to connect) is liable to break eventually.
There are a lot of scenarios that involve power and perhaps internet outages but aren't the end of mankind. Volcanoes, earthquakes, war-related disruption, (worse) viruses.
Power is something you can do yourself. We have a cabin with 5 x solar panels and a 3kw inverter for example. Others may just have a deep cycle battery connected to a trickle charger. It's quite likely that there may be power outages but you still have 3g/4g internet connectivity.
3 and 5 are good points. I thought terminal blocks as well.
I went through a category 5 hurricane and this would not have been much different than my 2012 modem MacBook. Which performed excellently and kept me mostly sane.
>3. I'm not under the impression that Raspberry Pi's are especially durable, though the SD-card storage is probably the weakest link (though both those things probably have benefits of being common things that allow for the scavenging of replacement parts).
With as much space is available in that case, you could have a stack of spare SD cards pre-imaged ready to go in case the one in the Pi gets corrupted
You're looking at if from the perspective of "how can I make this thing work?", which is backwards.
In a doomsday scenario, I think it's almost certain you will not need a general purpose computer, and such a thing will be an albatross. You will need be mobile to find food and safe shelter. You will not need to hack the Vault-Tec mainframe to download a map to lightly-guarded supply depots. You will not have the luxury of trying to construct a power generator for a new settlement.
I've seen lots of really silly projects about resilient computing that miss the forest for the trees (and feel a bit like LARPing) but this is actually a fairly sensible project that makes good tradeoffs (though the comments in this post about connectors and SD cards are good.)
Remember, the title here is "Off-Grid" not "Post cataclysmic disaster". There's lots of quotidian off-grid experiences people experience all the time. Sometimes you end up in "nature" where there is power but it's a bit hard to come by and you're a day or two out from civilization. Sometimes you're traveling and you just don't have a power outlet with steady power near you or you just have enough access on a plane/train/etc to power your smartphone and nothing else.
My partner's parents' power was knocked out during a hurricaine a couple years ago and they were without power for a few days. They had their smartphones but wanted to conserve power in case they needed maps or something. This solution actually works quite well for that situation.
> Remember, the title here is "Off-Grid" not "Post cataclysmic disaster". There's lots of quotidian off-grid experiences people experience all the time.
That's what the title says, but he's also trying to EMP shield it, so he's definitely thinking about "post cataclysmic disaster" cases.
If the bombs fall, I don't think PC will be very useful, and putting effort into making sure you have one actually seems like it could do more harm than good.
My sense is there might be fallacy underlying this of computer-people assuming the tool they're most skilled with will always remain important and useful to them.
I think you're trying to assign the first scenario you thought of and project that as other's viewpoint when it isn't.
The main use-case I can think of for this would be as a low-power PC at a basecamp connected to a solar source.
During extreme weather or events you would close it, it could be transported safely via raft / boat / etc. I find the descriptor "off-grid" apt to indicate this.
Under your scenario of being mobile in some sort of doomsday scavenging scenario, a mobile phone would be appropriate. This isn't suited for that, but I don't think anyone suggested it to be.
I really love seeing the cyberdeck posts recently. It's always been an area that I've wanted to get into, but don't really have a need (nor the time or the money). Instead, I get my kicks vicariously through things like this article.
Same, however whenever I think about building one I demotivate myself by realizing it’s nothing more than an electronic art project and will never see any real usage for any practical purpose. We don’t really live in a world where cyberdecks are necessary.
That's slick! And I'm glad to see the models for the internal bits available. I've got pieces for a YARH handheld... laying around, mostly, since other projects came up and I'm less motivated to figure it out when I can't get any Pis for sane pricing right now.
> EMP Shielding
Not to drag this thread too far off topic, but this concept has been coming up a lot around me in about the past week. Is there something specific that's been coming up lately about it I've missed?
> Not to drag this thread too far off topic, but this concept has been coming up a lot around me in about the past week. Is there something specific that's been coming up lately about it I've missed?
I'm not aware of a particular occurrence in the past week. Noticing the topic of EMP shielding could be due to a mix of Russia's vague nuclear remarks, people finishing Neal Stephenson's book "Termination Shock," and frequency illusion.
I wonder if it's the whole "russia might drop nukes or EMP-blast a large portion of the globe because of what's happening with ukraine, i better EMP protect my electronics in case they get fried"
From my casual research EMP is much less of a problem than people seem to think it is. Modern electronics are small, and don’t have large antennas where a large current can build up. Power lines and such would be vulnerable, but that’s about it, unless you were sitting right underneath or within a few miles of a nuclear explosion, in which case you have bigger problems to worry about.
Its the airburst nukes (ones that detonate just above the ground) that are most harmful for life as it spreads more, its what the Chinese had been testing which got them some criticism a few years or so ago.
Ah, that looks... likely. Thanks! I know it's been a concern of various groups at a low level for some while, but it's been popping up far more than I'd expect lately, and I was curious as to what triggered it. The people who've brought it up (at least in person) don't seem particularly well informed as to the technical details, so I assumed there was something talking about it, I just wasn't sure what.
It’s pretty interesting to compare the report from a year ago when Russia was still seen as some super advanced military threat with the actual performance of the Russian military in Ukraine over the past almost 3 months.
It's not EMI because it's the cardboard box that he puts the pelicase into. And quite honestly, that cardboard box won't do a whole lot. You probably have pretty good cell reception in it.
I have been tinkering with a cyberdeck for a while now for off-grid usage, so this is a nice find for the hardware side. My main battle lately has been building out the software side; primarily Kiwix (https://www.kiwix.org).
I was originally trying to set it up as the Kiwix wifi hotspot. But after playing with that I decided I wanted the pc to have more than one function so I switched to regular Linux with Kiwix.
So now instead of just Kiwix; I also have my handheld radio programming software (CHIRP), ATAK Server, microcontroller dev environment, copy of Collapse OS, etc.
Does ATAK (FreeTak I assume) run pretty well? Are you just saving everything to the sd card?
I have had a similar project set bouncing around in my head. I have some LilyGo LoRa radios arriving soon to see how well Meshtastic works as an alternative to internet.
I am running the Pi from a solid state hdd as I don't trust the sd cards. ATAK/FreeTak does run well on it. Funny you mention LoRa as I am using exactly that. I have a bunch of the TTGO T-beams (915 MHz) that I have paired up with old Android phones that run entirely off the T-beams/Meshtastic. They can be slow at times for messaging, but it really depends on the channel setting (short range vs very long range).
Harbor Freight has nearly identical cases to the Pelican that are a lot cheaper. I recently used one mounted on the front of a bike that I converted to electric, with the battery and motor controller jammed inside. They occasionally go on sale, and I wiped out their inventory the last two times I went as they don't seem to carry a lot at once. Hopefully I'll get around to making a cyberdeck out of one.
I sure wouldn't use the harbor freight pelican knockoffs if I need a big case, they're too cheap and flimsy, but for a small case they're okay. You still need to pay the real pelican price if you are buying something bigger like a 1510, 1535, 1620, 1637.
The smallest one was recently on sale for $11.99 with foam and is great for small fragile things.
I’ve been looking for low power cyberdeck designs and haven’t found anything. Where are the Alphasmart, eMate, Psion 5, or Model 100 descendants that run for weeks on AA batteries?
Yeah, there's basically nothing (that I know of). I was looking into building myself a long-lasting solar-powered mini PC with e-paper display, but have "put that on the back burner" for the time being. Would be nice to have something that just barely sips power :)
I can tell you that if you walk through security with a bag full of loose sata to ide converters (bare PCBs), molex splitters (wires), and HDDs, the TSA gives you the bonus screening as well as some free advice to not do it again.
I used to travel back and forth between Rotterdam and London with a pelicase and I got taken aside every single time, repeatedly scanning it, drug swabs the whole shebang.
Would be cool to build a few of these and spec them with a LoRa mesh messenger network. You could even build solar powered relay boxes to "connect" settlements.
In the end it's all just a toy anyways, but it feels nice to come up with these things. Makes me feel a little less helpless, maybe I should just go to the gym more often though.
Cyberdecks are more about the freedom of selecting exactly the hardware components you want (in the same way you can when you build a desktop computer)[0] so I don't think an average laptop would do the job.
For example, this cyberdeck has a mechanical keyboard which is quite rare on laptops.
Yesterday I was browsing a forum that shows cyberdecks built by users, and one had a circular screen! [1] You would definitely have a hard time finding a laptop with that! :-D
the pelican laptop cases exist, the 1495 is a great product, albeit huge and heavy. you can actually fit 3 modern laptops, a satellite phone, a usb battery pack and a shitload of accessories into one.
I may try to build something similar just out of fun, replacing the Pelican case with the strongbox that came with my COROS Vertix adventure watch, as it is now laying around with no other use.
As already pointed out by others, Mil-spec GPIO female connectors would probably be more versatile and easier to use than male ones in the present design. More durable storage and e-ink display would be also nice.
Nice job on the wiring! I read that this is the second attempt and it shows. When I do wiring I always make a mess the first time and then get it a little better the second, third, ... time. Luckily at my job we get pros or panel vendors to do this, otherwise I'd be in trouble.
1. If you're off the grid, where are you going to get power to run this?
2. If there's no power grid or internet, you probably have much bigger problems than "how can I browse an offline copy of Wikipedia." Those problems would probably last longer than you want to schlep around and item like this.
3. I'm not under the impression that Raspberry Pi's are especially durable, though the SD-card storage is probably the weakest link (though both those things probably have benefits of being common things that allow for the scavenging of replacement parts).
4. If you need to protect from an EMP, I don't think "tinfoil lined cardboard box" will be sufficient. I was reading up on that a couple of months ago when the war started, and it sounds like little gaps in the shielding can seriously compromise the effectiveness of the sheilding.
5. Mil-spec connectors look cool, but if you need to use something like this, you'll probably want connectors that are a common as possible. A connector is useless if you don't have anything to plug into it. Some kind of terminal block would probably make more sense. Using a male connector seems like a particularly fatal flaw (if you used female, you'd at least be able to stick wires in the holes in a pinch).
If you want to usefully prepare for any doomsday scenario, you probably need to really carefully think about your actual requirements in that scenario, and then build to those requirements. IMHO, if it's an actual doomsday, it's probably safe to assume technological society will collapse and not recover for generations, and any high technology would in reality be a short-to-medium term consumable that will break without replacement.