It's not official yet but they're prototyping a reboot which is compatible with the current core module that has better performance and a touch screen.
It sounds like there are a lot of people, in this thread and elsewhere, pushing for something similar. If only there were a way to unite all this effort under one umbrella...
Those aren't nearly as cool looking although I'd still want one. Unfortunately, these kinds of devices are more expensive than they should be considering that they're marketed as toys/experimental devices. Once you go over $100, it's more cost effective to just pick up a cheap second-hand laptop instead, though they're not pocketable and certainly a lot more boring.
Also, it bugs me that the ClockworkPi seems to be RISC-V powered - they should change the name for those and fully get on the RISC-V bandwagon.
My zipitz2 costs far less and it was an amazing tiny serial console (with an 80x25 cli with a tiny font) and a sdl2 based GUI. I could emulate the NES, play nethack/slashem, IF, mp3, join MUDs, connect to wifi to browse webs with lynx and links, read epubs with a custom script with unzip and elinks...
Yeah. I remember taking it on every single family trip for years just hoping to catch a single packet. Never got one. Oh well. I somehow got a replacement under warranty, they let me keep the old broken unit. I set it up to work as a WAP gateway (the issue wasn't fatal) and used it to mess about on the early mobile internet, had a great time.
This was an exciting product for me! When I was 14 and learning coding, I got excited about the Cybiko and started playing around with grand ideas about games, apps and even an "RPG Kit" (rpg builder) which I started to spec out on their forums.
As a result, Cybiko sent some units to me (in the UK) - before it was released! This got little old me very excited.
Unfortunately, not only did it not take off, but I was 14 and had all the enthusiasm and ideas without much of the ability to solve the problems.
Still, very exciting at the time.. remember working with the homebrew/hacking scene on IRC. Someone there was writing an emulator, and I had fun with IDA Pro playing around with trying to understand the firmware/BIOS dump.
The keyboard and stylus was pretty awful, and performance left a lot to be desired..
It's notable for being one of very few consumer devices featuring mesh networking.
I have so much nostalgia for cool little bits of tech like this. When I have a more permanent place to live I intend to start a collection, mostly of videogame hardware, but including the odd random tech device like this.
>The Cybiko is a Russian handheld computer introduced in the United States by David Yang's company Cybiko Inc.
Interestingly, the Russian language version has no mention of it being Russian. The English article doesn't elaborate further. At first I thought the wiki page was vandalized but then I followed one of the links and ended up finding a Russian game magazine of the time where they mention the software for it was developed in Russia.
I noticed this too. Thanks for digging this out! Maybe you should put that sentence on both Wikipedias, so the next person wouldn't be wondering about this!
I remember wanting one of these so badly when they were announced, they were marketing the hell out of them at the time. It’s a shame they were not more popular, could have been fun bringing them to school and interacting with students similarly to how we later did with PictoChat on the Nintendo DS.
I found one of these when I was going through some old boxes at my parents house, totally forgot I had it. I really begged them for it - then played with it once, put it in a box and never saw again.
It's an amazing artifact of late 90s design - colored translucent plastic, sort-of-ergonomic form factor, weirdly shaped buttons that can only be used with a stylus, an aerial. The screen is actually amazing for the time, light years ahead of a GameBoy.
The glaring problem, sadly, is that there's nothing you can actually _do_ with it. There were no games of any quality, and the mesh networking would only work over a short range and if somebody else had one, which meant that feature was useless in the suburbs.
I think it has to be remembered that at the time, before smartphones, PalmPilots were a very big deal. Somebody thought hey, what if we made a PalmPilot for teenagers. Maybe not a terrible idea on paper, but they didn't need them.
Still, it's an awesome _object_. A pure crystal of optimistic new-millenium funk, not the drab industrial design of slow, perpetual decline we have now.
> which meant that feature was useless in the suburbs.
I bought my kids a box of cybikos on eBay. My daughters gave them to their neighborhood friends so they could chat, and the FM transceiver had a range of 300-500 ft, so they had our whole suburban neighborhood chatting. There were a couple of good games. The real problem was batteries. They used prismatic batteries which were simply hard to get, and the batteries would die after about 8 months of use. If I bought at a local store, the battery would be $30 per cell, but if I bought a box online, I could get 144 for $50. I paid $50 for the box of cybikos!
I dug out my old Nintendo DSs and gave them to the kids. The fact that the chat/drawing app could automatically link the DSs and they could just start chatting blew me away. The kids actually preferred using the DS over the switch. This reminds me a bit of that.
I wish there was a good simple modern-day device for kids to use with this kind of capability without connecting to the internet.
If your kids take a liking to it, replacing the LiPo cell is a quick and easy hack to breathe new life intob it. Don't bother buying replacement batteries, they're all trash, just harvest the pcb from the old battery.
You could configure a second Cybiko, hooked up to your computer, to act as a gateway between an untethered Cybiko and the internet. They teased a standalone device to do this (CyWIG) but I don't think that ever actually shipped.
At one point I did set this up and managed to browse some (terrible) WAP websites and I think I managed to get AIM working somehow too. No memory as to if you could tunnel through to do other wireless things with other bridged Cybikos though as the setup was so clowny I had no other friends to try it with.
Very interesting! I did some searching but it seems they never had a system for having it act as a bridge between two cybiko nets? I would expect that to be a reasonable thing to do what with the mesh network.
I've thought about trying to build a mesh-networking chat device for my kid and their friends who are too young for phones but would enjoy "texting" in town. Probably using a LoRA + Arduino/Rasberry Pi but by the time I add in a screen and keyboard it might be cheaper/easier to just buy a few of these off ebay.
Anyone have thoughts or experience acquiring and using a Cybiko recently?
The LGR video (linked in this thread) mentions they bought four devices and all had defects that needed to be fixed before they could be used. Most cases the batteries had leaked, which had to be cleaned up. This might cause some corrosion of contacts as well.
So if you want to give used Cybikos a try, you should be willing to deal with this.
I saved up for months and months and bought a lime green one when I was a middle school kid. They had an mp3 player attachment (!!!) so the Cybiko was actually my first digital music player. When they went bankrupt I bought a couple more (magenta this time) off eBay for next to nothing. Unfortunately I didn’t have any friends that were as in to tech as I was, so I never really did have anyone to text with during classes. I remember corresponding with the company about some bugs and feature requests and learning they had an army of developers somewhere in Eastern Europe, which really impressed me then. I have such fond memories of my cybikos! I wish I knew where they ended up.
I was trying to cobble something together with an esp32 that would make a handie talking that would allow text, voice and image transfers on a p2p network that wouldn't have a range longer than a house a way, but it is a slog.
Is there a modern equivalent to this or can an old android phone be repurposed to do this? I was thinking that if the frequency was shifted up to 2.4 GHz then a repurposed android device could do all of this, but alas there aren't any projects of which I have been able to find.
> US variant (Model No. CY44801) has frequency range of 902-928 MHz and European variant (Model No. CY44802) with frequency range of 868-870 MHz
Those are the ISM frequencies, not specific to LoRa. Basically an unlicensed wasteland of RF where anything goes, as long as you stay below a certain transmit power level.
I guarantee this device (made in the the 90s) is completely incompatible at the link layer with LoRa gear.
Some LoRa chips support multiple modulation types for non-LoRa "legacy" applications.
My point is they use the same frequencies and would likely be easier than upshifting to 2.4GHz and having an Android device handle it. I didn't make any indication it would Just Work™.
This is exactly what I was interested in, unlicensed transceiver so a novice or a kid can transmit a short distance like a handie talkie without worrying about eavesdropping.
There are several varieties of ESP32's combined with LoRa, such as the disaster radio, meshtastic and ttgo t-beam. The last one is probably the easiest bit of kit to get from Amazon and will run the other's firmware.
These came out when I was in 6th grade and were the hot new nerd toy for a few months. A handful of kids had them and the ability to text message students in nearby classrooms was impossibly cool. They became pretty disruptive as whoever had one had a group of kids huddled around them, pretty sure they were eventually banned by the school district (and were not easy to hide)
I had both of these things. Loved CyLandia so much, nearly got addicted to that game at one point. The only problem is I never knew or even heard of a single other human being in real life who had one...
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[ 350 ms ] story [ 696 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30485353
I'm trying to recreate a modern one using ESP32 WIFI, LORA, eink screen, blackberry keyboard. I have all the parts, just need to start building it
Can we all get together somehow?
Something close (& and extremely hackable) can be yours for $79 + shipping: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/face?variant=1729043762389...
It's not official yet but they're prototyping a reboot which is compatible with the current core module that has better performance and a touch screen.
Also, it bugs me that the ClockworkPi seems to be RISC-V powered - they should change the name for those and fully get on the RISC-V bandwagon.
https://youtu.be/38VEBOseAzM
As a result, Cybiko sent some units to me (in the UK) - before it was released! This got little old me very excited.
Unfortunately, not only did it not take off, but I was 14 and had all the enthusiasm and ideas without much of the ability to solve the problems.
Still, very exciting at the time.. remember working with the homebrew/hacking scene on IRC. Someone there was writing an emulator, and I had fun with IDA Pro playing around with trying to understand the firmware/BIOS dump.
The keyboard and stylus was pretty awful, and performance left a lot to be desired..
EDIT: holy moly! I forgot I had an old website with projects from that time. Well, here it is, warts and all: http://greenprojects.iwarp.com/specialprojects/rpgkit/
https://youtu.be/38VEBOseAzM
It's notable for being one of very few consumer devices featuring mesh networking.
I have so much nostalgia for cool little bits of tech like this. When I have a more permanent place to live I intend to start a collection, mostly of videogame hardware, but including the odd random tech device like this.
Interestingly, the Russian language version has no mention of it being Russian. The English article doesn't elaborate further. At first I thought the wiki page was vandalized but then I followed one of the links and ended up finding a Russian game magazine of the time where they mention the software for it was developed in Russia.
I don't remember it ever being introduced in Russia.
It's an amazing artifact of late 90s design - colored translucent plastic, sort-of-ergonomic form factor, weirdly shaped buttons that can only be used with a stylus, an aerial. The screen is actually amazing for the time, light years ahead of a GameBoy.
The glaring problem, sadly, is that there's nothing you can actually _do_ with it. There were no games of any quality, and the mesh networking would only work over a short range and if somebody else had one, which meant that feature was useless in the suburbs.
I think it has to be remembered that at the time, before smartphones, PalmPilots were a very big deal. Somebody thought hey, what if we made a PalmPilot for teenagers. Maybe not a terrible idea on paper, but they didn't need them.
Still, it's an awesome _object_. A pure crystal of optimistic new-millenium funk, not the drab industrial design of slow, perpetual decline we have now.
I bought my kids a box of cybikos on eBay. My daughters gave them to their neighborhood friends so they could chat, and the FM transceiver had a range of 300-500 ft, so they had our whole suburban neighborhood chatting. There were a couple of good games. The real problem was batteries. They used prismatic batteries which were simply hard to get, and the batteries would die after about 8 months of use. If I bought at a local store, the battery would be $30 per cell, but if I bought a box online, I could get 144 for $50. I paid $50 for the box of cybikos!
I wish there was a good simple modern-day device for kids to use with this kind of capability without connecting to the internet.
… now I want to buy two off eBay to play with. Thanks a lot.
Unfortunately, one acting as a repeater would take your range from 10 feet to 20 feet.
At one point I did set this up and managed to browse some (terrible) WAP websites and I think I managed to get AIM working somehow too. No memory as to if you could tunnel through to do other wireless things with other bridged Cybikos though as the setup was so clowny I had no other friends to try it with.
Anyone have thoughts or experience acquiring and using a Cybiko recently?
What about just using cheap tablets with rugged cases, and some app like meshenger?
So if you want to give used Cybikos a try, you should be willing to deal with this.
Is there a modern equivalent to this or can an old android phone be repurposed to do this? I was thinking that if the frequency was shifted up to 2.4 GHz then a repurposed android device could do all of this, but alas there aren't any projects of which I have been able to find.
> US variant (Model No. CY44801) has frequency range of 902-928 MHz and European variant (Model No. CY44802) with frequency range of 868-870 MHz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa
I guarantee this device (made in the the 90s) is completely incompatible at the link layer with LoRa gear.
My point is they use the same frequencies and would likely be easier than upshifting to 2.4GHz and having an Android device handle it. I didn't make any indication it would Just Work™.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISM_radio_band
Also, there are many BLE based mesh apps like meshenger IIRC.