Bah, pathetic! It’s got to me what, 25-30mm thick?
Looks thick to me too, but I’m repeatedly impressed by Raspberry Pi. This is still a really cool step.
Affordable? Even without the many hours it took to construct this, of the specialized equipment involved, I’m guessing the parts alone were much more than the more basic tablets on the market, and probably more than something like a Nexus 7 or Fire HD.
Yeah, looks like $260+ worth of parts. Which is too bad, as the idea of making one’s own tablet is appealing.
Economies of scale will mean you can buy better tablets than this for less at a store, but the experience and confidence you’d gain by building one can’t be measured in dollars.
I love living in the future!
Apologies, I thought my arrogant sarcasm would have been obvious. The man has built his own tablet, it is incredibly impressive.
I thought my arrogant sarcasm would have been obvious.
There’s a time when it would have been obvious even to those not familiar with you. Sigh… But pedantry, contrarianism, excessive nitpicking and general dickishness has spread across the Internet like a rampant disease in the last few years and it’s honestly hard to tell anymore. It’s weighing on nearly everyone at this point and making people jumpy.
Plus you should be able to, down the line, pull the pi out and replace it with better when it comes out. Can’t do that with a nexus or iGadget.
And it would still be cheaper to buy a new Nexus 7 now and buy new generations and sell your old ones than to try and upgrade this sucker over the years. I mean, this is a cool thing for those who have the time, money, and skill to build it, but it’s never going to be a better value than commercially available consumer electronics.
To the naysayers: keep in mind that one can guarantee that this tablet doesn’t sport an “NSA Inside” sticker. THAT is worth gold.
I can buy beer just as cheap or cheaper than I can make it (and I do) but it’s still fun to brew at home.
Need another analogy, or is it still too much to grasp?
Yeah, how about I deconstruct your analogy for you: “this is a cool thing for those who have the time, money, and skill to build it, but it’s never going to be a better value than commercially available consumer electronics.”
Need another deconstruction, or do you think you have a grasp of it? (Your construction makes no sense, since if it was too much to grasp then I would need another analogy, and if I didn’t need an analogy then I would have been able to grasp it. Was that too much for you to grasp? Would you like me explain it again?)
No one ever said that. Which is your problem. You’re projecting and doing the boing boing pedant theater thing.
These are the notes that you didn’t read/get -
"I love that individuals now have the tools and technology to affordably make their own consumer electronics. Michael Caster built a tablet with a Raspberry Pi (a credit card sized Linux computer) that he calls the PiPad. It has a wood and carbon fiber case and looks great! "
I grasp all that just fine. Try again. With less fail.
My definition of affordable is obviously different than yours, but I don’t think my definition is particularly idiosyncratic. It doesn’t include paying more in parts than a top-of-the-line Android tablet would cost, especially when access to a CNC router is required, up to two weeks of staying up until 4 am to build it, and it lacks basic features such as even the simplest of cameras (all of which is detailed in the linked piece). Building home computers is affordable, and many people criticize Apple products as unaffordable. Given the features and resources required, this is much less affordable than any Apple product is. Hence my comments about the affordability of it.
Yeah, but does it play Angry Birds?
$260 in parts for a custom built, hand crafted wood tablet? i may have to make one myself. a lot of people seem to forget, like a previous poster mentioned, how friggan’ awesome it is to live in the future. In the 90’s I used to make wooden cases for PCs as a hobby, and those were $2k+ for the system. I think nit picking on the order of a benjamin for this kind of project is, well, missing the forest for the trees 
a tablet case made from laminated grenadilla would be insanely cool.
I guess some people just can’t enjoy things.
Sorry about that.
I agree that this is totally awesome. Affordable? Well, the parts are affordable (though, as mentioned above, obviously more than the cost of buying a tablet on your own). The tools required to make it, I guess your mileage may vary. This guy was lucky enough to have access to a CNC router, but I imagine you could make a (much less pretty) case for it without that. But all in all, this would be an insanely fun project to undertake. And what price can you put on the fun of putting this together, not to mention the satisfaction of having built something like this yourself?
