DIY-articles describing projects, the central part of which was Raspberry Pi, were published on Habré more than once or twice. "Malinka" is actually suitable for such purposes almost perfectly. Recently, another such project has appeared that deserves attention.
It is called the Raspberry Pi Recovery Kit and is a secure PC, similar in some ways to Pipboy from Fallout. It has a waterproof housing, some interface elements seemed to come to us from the 50s of the last century. But in reality it is, of course, a modern PC, which only pretends to be a retro computer.
The project was developed by Jay Doscher. The author explained that he did his best to make the computer look like ordinary people about protected military equipment. Some of the components of this PC are printed on a 3D printer.
It is worth noting that this is not the first version of Recovery Kit. A few years ago a prototype was introduced , the design and functionality of which were finalized.
The computer is mounted inside the protective case of the Pelican camera using elements printed on a 3D printer. In addition, a 7-inch touch screen, battery, 5z6p Plaid keyboard, plus a five-port switch from Tengear are added.
The PC is protected against electromagnetic interference by copper foil glued to the inside of the transport package. Thus, the author of the project provided for something like a Faraday cage. As far as one can understand, powerful electromagnetic pulses for this device are not a hindrance, unless, of course, at the time of the incident the device is in its packaging.
The idea of the project was inspired by the author of NF novel “Neuromancer” by William Gibson. The work in the cyberpunk genre was released in 1984. This is Gibson's first novel to open the Cyberspace trilogy. The heroes of the novel used powerful and compact devices to gain access to cyberspace on the go. Now, of course, everyone has smartphones, but nevertheless, devices from Neuromant still impress.
Most of the elements of the device in question are working, and not made purely for beauty. So, the switches are used to disable some functions of the PC, which helps to conserve battery power. Well, since one of the main elements of a computer is a network switch, the Raspberry Pi Recovery Kit can be used as the central element of a small network.
If you work in a situation where access to energy is limited and you need a network, Raspberry Pi can work with DNS, DHCP and as a web server. Actually, the computer is able to perform the functions of a router.
Actually, the project was made “for the fan”, so do not take it as a real PC in case of “Doomsday”. But this computer is not a simple toy, since it can be used to solve very real practical problems.