Homebrew pi400 (2025 Update)

Daniel · 2024-11-21T23:44:14+00:00

This past summer was a good time to lower the power bill and overalltemperature of the den by transitioning to rpi's for my computingneeds. The main pc was replaced by a pi400. Lovely, silent, lowpower. Lovely. Well, mostly so. I really don't like the keyboard and question why theywent with it. The full sized keyboard is something I miss, you know,with the full row of function keys, dedicated number pad, full sizedarrows, the cluster. The keys themselves suck- where they often fail to register key presses and I have to fixspelling quite often. I had hoped that the keys would wear in and solvethe problem, but it really just seems to be bad design. Hopes are it'ssimply bad luck and a bad keyboard. The problem is easy to solve by plugging in a usb keyboard, but itdefeats the appeal and purpose of the all-in-one design. How hard would it be to rig the mobo into a full size keyboard shell?Design a new lower shell of a chosen keyboard to accomodate the mobo andport holes for 3d printing. A search online didn't yield evidence thatit has been done yet. But if this thing with it's massive heat sync canfit in this small keyboard, it shouldn't have issues fitting in fullsized keybord. Found a teardown video and saw a custom ribbon cable utilized to connectthe keyboard to the mobo - so that's a complication. After a bit ofsearching, they utilized one of the four usb ports in the hub for thekeyboard logic. Has anyone managed a similar project with the experience to share?Daniel

Nov 21, 2024 Last reply: 9 months ago 62 Replies

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Lawrence D’Oliveiro 9 months ago

Looks promising, but you should check scaling_cur_freq and scaling_max_freq -- I think these show what your CPU is up to right now.

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Bob Martin 9 months ago

They are refurbished, not new.

I have three refurbished Lenovo Mini PCs (M93p) from Amazon, each cost a little over £70 and are serving me well.

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John R Walliker 9 months ago

Mine are new. John

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