I haven't updated this project in a couple months, but I have been working on it on my spare time. I dropped it one day and I figured it was time for a rebuild anyway. I was having trouble finding the time to work on getting the teensy programmed so I shelved that part for now and found a different keyboard that was USB interface. I ordered this one on eBay. It's a generic case for a tablet with a keyboard. I used a razor and cut the case up and removed the keyboard from it. Then i designed a new housing out of my favorite material, dollar store clipboards made from mdf. This version is slightly bigger since the keyboard is larger then the last one but that gave me more room inside so i added 2 more 18650 cells. I also salvaged some speakers from and old laptop and wired them to the amp in the lid.

The day the Pi3 came out i ordered one and tried it inside my project. The performance was very good and built in Bluetooth and WiFi was nice, but man is the Pi3 a hungry little board. It also runs hot. I was having trouble supplying enough power to it so i went back to using the Pi2 until i can sort the power issues.

While remaking the housing I got an idea for the keyboard to slide into it so I carefully cut some grooves along the top. It worked better than i thought it would. I also wanted to eliminate the loose wires running to it so i came up with another idea to use male and female pin headers. I glued a piece of MDF to the bottom of the keyboard with some space cutout for the small board and a space cut out for the male pinheaders. I hot glued them in place then carefully lined up the female header on top of the batteries and glued it in place. So now when i slide the keyboard in place the pin headers connect. Then i wired this to one of the pi's usb ports by removing the metal shield from the back and cutting the traces to the upper usb port which is non-functional now. I might wire in a hub and connect this port back into the hub to make it functional again.

I'm currently awaiting some boost converters i ordered. I want to try using two of them wired to the same battery. One for the pi and the other for the screen and audio amp. It'll probably be a couple weeks until they arrive. I use a Bluetooth mouse now since i couldn't find a good place for the psp joystick. I just received my Latte Panda with 7 inch screen and I'm thinking about making it portable too.

That's all for now.