This practice ‘writerdeck’ is a beautiful digital typewriter from one other time

A “cyberdeck” is a conveyable, handmade laptop impressed by William Gibson’s science fiction of the Eighties. It’s principally a cyberpunk laptop computer. A “writerdeck,” then, is an identical idea however just for writing textual content. I’ve been dabbling with some industrial choices recently. However I believe each machine classes may simply have a brand new champion: the Micro Journal Rev 2.1. Take a look at this stunning factor. Simply take a look at it!

Un Kyu Lee has been designing, 3D-printing, and hand-assembling a collection of Micro Journal devices for the final couple of years, painstakingly documenting his efforts on YouTube and /r/writerdeck. Rev 2.1 is definitely his tenth era (not less than) and a delicate revision of an earlier mannequin. Lee’s decisions are eclectic and extremely private—he’s obtained every little thing from a full-on mini-laptop design to a tool that’s only a 2.8-inch display screen you plug a keyboard into. One in all his newest tasks was creating a brand new, retro-futurist housing for an AlphaSmart Neo 2, a basic within the admittedly area of interest class of writing-only units from the 90s and 2000s.

However having adopted his work for a while, I believe the Micro Journal 2.1 could also be his masterpiece. It makes use of a 65% mechanical keyboard with a normal structure, which is extra user-friendly than a few of the ortholinear keyboards in different Micro Journals. It has a full LCD display screen as a substitute of e-ink for sooner response, and at 8 inches large it’s comparatively big in comparison with a lot of the shows on earlier Micro Journals. It has built-in batteries for portability, although they’re AA and have to be swapped out by hand. Paperwork might be accessed by way of an internet interface from one other machine or manually moved over from a USB drive.

And it’s powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, so you’ll be able to preserve it operating WordGrinder (the targeted writing atmosphere that’s loaded on by default) or flash it with an enormous number of different working methods appropriate with the semi-standardized micro-computer. You may even flip it right into a basic sport emulator in the event you needed to. (Please don’t do this. Mr. Lee is a pleasant man and I believe it’d trigger him ache if he noticed it.)

The design appears to be like like a lovely mix of suitcase typewriters and basic all-in-one PCs from the 80s, one thing that will match proper at dwelling subsequent to a Commodore 64 or Osborne 1. And people spherical knobs on the aspect aren’t simply ornamental! They’re up/down and left/proper buttons, giving much more satisfying tactility to the gadget.

You should buy the Micro Journal 2.1—together with a few of his earlier designs—from Un Kyu Lee’s Tindie store. (It prices $359 USD in the event you’re questioning, which is quite a bit lower than some comparable, less-capable designs within the Pomera and Freewrite traces.) However these items are shortly changing into hard-to-find collector’s gadgets, as Lee builds each by hand and solely has time for very restricted runs.

You probably have entry to a soldering iron and a 3D printer, and in the event you’re as much as the problem, you’ll be able to construct it your self. As a devotee of open-source software program and {hardware}, Lee provides away the print information, directions, and a invoice of supplies for all his Micro Journal units on Github.