Spent the weekend turning my dusty old handheld shell into a pocket deck, and now I get the uConsole hype

I went down this same road last year with an old handheld shell that was doing nothing but collecting dust on my shelf. Pulled the empty battery bay out, put a slim power bank in there with the plastic case popped off it, and taped it down with velcro so I could pull it out to charge it. The whole thing still closes flush and I get a good few hours of use before it needs topping up. The velcro part matters more than you'd think because you will want it out regularly, hard-wiring a pack inside is a regret waiting to happen, ask me how I know. On the screen side, I found keeping the resolution low and the fonts chunky made it feel much more like a proper terminal instead of a shrunken desktop. For the camera, mine is held on with a bit of Sugru instead of hot glue, which peels off clean when you inevitably reposition it six times like I did. Worth having a blob of it around for janky mounts.

Funny timing reading this, beacuse I did almost the same project last winter with a Zero 2 W in an old handheld shell, and my one piece of hard earned advice is to test the whole thing before you commit to the glue and the cut shell. I skipped that step and then discovered my wifi dongle ran so hot it throttled after twenty minutes inside the case. Worked fine on the desk with the lid off, miserable once it was enclosed. I ended up just using a shorter antenna extension so the dongle could poke out of a vent hole instead.

The other thing I learned the hard way: check how much current your hub actually passes through. Mine dropped voltage when I plugged in two things at once and the Pi would reboot randomly whenever the GPS was hunting for satellites. Took me a week to figure out it was the hub and not the board.

Mine still lives in the drawer desk drawer as a little network scanner for when I travel, which sounds silly but it earns its keep. The shell thing is fun but honestly the planning spreadsheet I made for it was half the hobby for me too.

That terminal screensaver on a train is such a specific kind of fun, mine got me a nod from another nerd once which felt like a medal.

One thing on the hub: mine caused undervoltage lightning bolts untill I swapped to a short stubby cable instead of the coiled one it came with. The coiled cord ate way more power than I expected. Same hub, no more warning icon, zero drama since. Also if you're cutting the shell, go slow with whatever blade you use. I rushed mine and chipped the edge, had to melt it smooth with a soldering iron tip to make it look intentional.

Before you cut anything for the battery, worth measuring the internal clearance with the shell closed rather than trusting the empty bay dimensions, because the posts and screw bosses eat more depth than the molded outside suggests. I traced the usable footprint on cardboard first, which sounds fussy but saved me from ordering a pack that would've sat proud of the shell by a couple of millimetres. Also keep the GPS mouse antenna away from the hub side of the build, mine picked up noise until I rerouted it along the opposite edge. Did you slot the Zero 2 W in before or after cutting the notch, since desoldering nothing and still fitting everthing is the part I'd be proudest of.

This makes me want to dig my old handheld out of the closet too, it's been sitting there since the screen stopped turning on and I always assumed the whole thing was dead. Never thought about just keeping the shell and swapping what goes inside it. Does the little green computer board that goes in these cases come with the case or do you buy it seperate? Total guess but I'm picturing it's like a tiny square thing that plugs in the middle somewhere.