I could definitely see it for a quickie kiosk type of application. Having the keyboard tethered to the monitor and power supply would not work for me in most situations.
Might be interesting to create a snap-on battery plus touchscreen module for it. Instant laptop.
OK, I’ll ask. If this Pi-in-aKeyboard is the SECOND-best use of a Raspberry Pi, what is the BEST use?
Install unified remote on your phone, stick pi to back of TV and use it to torrent movies? That’s what I’ve done with mine anyway.
Is the big port on the back a parallel port? or something else?
That’s the Rasberry PI’s GPIO (general-purpose input/output)
So it’s a RasPi 4 by another name/config. But I just can’t really justify spending any $$$ on yet another SBC that doesn’t have PCIe.
Reminds me a bit of the Sinclair ZX80 from many years ago:
I wish Raspberry Pi were one modular form factor instead of several. (8 I think?) I don’t get why this keyboard isn’t a $70 add-on that accepts one of the other format factors such as the compute module, pi zero, or rpi4.
Friend of mine showed me this little amateur radio (ham radio) repeater. Its basically a pi-0 in a little box with a radio transceiver. It routes radio transmissions across the internet, giving you global coverage with a small UHF handheld.
(and yeah, I know thats dangerously close to a cell phone…)
edit: the one thing I wish for is a Pi which can hibernate. They are expensive little units to run once you start using batteries,
Well for starters that would cost $10 to $55 to even more then the keyboard already does, which is pretty big delta 
However I think the real reason it doesn’t take the add on route is the normal form factors don’t fit super well, so they did another one, and gave it more cooling so they could clock it a bit higher (about 20% higher I think). Well, the zero would have fit, but the zero has way less computer power then the 4.
The compute module may have fit, but the compute module is actually a lot more expensive because it is intended for noneducational use and doesn’t get a magical subsidy from the foundation, and also exposes more pins but fewer “finished interfaces” then the normal RPi models (for example I think it does not have a USB3 controller, but it has ePCI which normally the USB3 “consumes”, and it has eMMC, but no SD slot, and so on). So the compute module isn’t really a good base to start from to make a $70~$100 computer.
(ok, I just checked the RPi4 compute module prices, more like $50 for the 4G model, but you need to add more I/O stuff, so it wouldn’t be quite as bad as I thought)
From my point of view the shame is the RPi400 doesn’t expose the camera and LCD lines & the board isn’t available as a separate item
Wrong frequency band although I suppose it would be possible to modify the antenna depending on how accessible the traces are. There’s also no reason you couldn’t rig something up through the GPIO pins and an ADC hat.
Or those old imbeded mini-joystick. My old Thinkpad (as in Pentium II) had one and I rather liked it. A little harder on the wrist than a mouse, though.
I’m filled with dread at the prospect of using that keyboard; but honestly I’d like a crack at the PCB in this thing as a standalone part.
You can obviously minimize footprint by aggressively shoving connectors all over the place wherever they will fit; but if you, say, need to reach all the connectors, it doesn’t take much to prefer giving over a few more square inches to PCB and having everything lined up neatly in a row(plus, it often ends up being smaller and less maddening than the ‘run-little-pigtail-cables-and-try-to-re-neaten-everything’ alternative).
I’ve bought three different raspberry pis in the last two months for my ham shack. One is a small controller for an APRS IGate, another is a desktop replacement that I overclocked and put in a fan case, and the third is becoming an MMDVM hotspot.
They’re great little devices.
I’m a little confused by the niche this is supposed to fill, at least better than a regular rPi could. It’s pretty chonky for headless or portable uses, media centers and set-top boxes are going to want wireless input, and the lack of a built-in battery, trackpad, or display means you’re still going to end up with a bunch of wires to manage.
I don’t mean to sound overly negative, though. I guess you could use one with a cheap teevee as an inexpensive 3D printer or CNC terminal, or maybe the foundation just wanted some duplo to the regular rPi line’s lego-like functionality. More kids using linux is a good thing.
They are inexpensive computers for school children in the UK and other countries wealthy enough that a HDMI TV can be assumed to be in the home. Fairly durable, and not actually a laptop so no hinge or LCD to need to make durable.
That is the primary purpose of the RPi foundation — a hands on compSci for kids.
What @Stripes said.
Ah, yes. That would work 
Nipple Mouse Is Best Mouse. ThinkPads still have them, as do some Dells.
OK, now I’m really curious… what do you want to attach to a Raspberry PI via PCIe?
I’m honestly kind of thinking trying to keep up with the bandwidth would swamp the poor little thing…
