The CutiePie is a tablet with a 8 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display, a 5,000 mAh battery, and a carrying handle.
It’s also a modular, open source device that’s powered by a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ Lite single-board computer. The tablet is designed to run Linux-based software and the hardware and software designs are open source, which means anyone can download everything you need to build and set up your own CutiePi tablet.
But if you don’t happen to have a 3D Printer or the means to build your own PCB, now you can back the CutiePi Kickstarter campaign to reserve a complete CutiePi tablet or just the components you need.
The CutiePi tablet measures 8.4″ x 5.3″ x 0.5″ (213mm x 134mm x 12mm).
The developers plan to begin shipping the tablet to backers in November, when it’s expected to sell for $229. But backers of the crowdfunding campaign can reserve one for lower prices:
- Super Early Bird reward – $169 (limited to 50 backers)
- Early Bird reward – $179 (limited to 150 backers)
- Kickstarter Special reward – $198 (no limit)
That price includes a tablet, microSD card with software pre-installed, and cables.
Backers can also order just the PCB board if they’d rather build their own case. The board includes USB Type-C and Type-A ports, 6 GPIO pins, a micro HDMI port, WiFi 4, Bluetooth 4.0, a gyroscope and other components including a sleep/wake button, power management, and an amplifier. A pledge of $90 gets you two CutiePi boards plus a set of cables.
In the center of the board there’s also a SODIMM slot for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, which acts as the brains of the tablet. That’s a single-board computer with a 1.2 GHz Broadcom BCM2837 ARM Cortex-A53 processor and 1GB of RAM.
While there’s no shortage of software capable of running on Raspberry Pi computers. CutiePi also supports a custom version of the Raspbian Linux operating system with the CutiePi Shell user interface, which makes the operating system more touchscreen-friendly thanks to an on-screen keyboard, touch-optimized web browser, and other features, including a battery indicator.
Well that handle does make for a kickstand of sorts.
Hi, will you also ensure support for CellWriter via the touch screen?