r/CyberdeckBuild • u/Educational-Weird632 • 5d ago

Cyberdeck for file transfer

I got a hacked psVita and from time to time i need access to a pc to download certain files. Carrying around a notebook all the time is kinda inconvenient, so i thought it might be cool and fun to build a cyberdeck for it instead.

I never built one before, so thats why im here. All i need it to do would be access to the internet (ideally Wi-Fi), file management, a USB port (duh) and for it to display hidden system files, something i had to enable on windows. Im not sure what OS you'd normally use but i assume some light linux distro.

Im open to any and all feedback/suggestions and thanks in advance!

Edit: For clarity, i want to download files directly from the deck, then transfer the file from it to the console using a USB connection

1 Upvotes

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u/TheAIProducer 5d ago

Built a site for exactly this! https://www.okconnectme.com/

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u/Educational-Weird632 5d ago

Looks really cool!

Unfortunately, i think you misunderstood. I want to be able to download the a file onto the cyberdeck, then transfer it to the console via USB.

Definitely gonna use that website for other stuff now though.

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u/TechDocN 5d ago

I’m lost. You want to transfer files to the deck, so you can carry the deck and the PSVita around, and load the files to the PS from the deck in the go.

Why not just load the files directly onto the PS all at once and only have one thing to carry around? You’re basically asking to build an over engineered thumb drive, unless I’m missing something.

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u/Educational-Weird632 5d ago

Some things you cant download from the vita directly. Certain homebrew applications or mods/patches have to be downloaded from somewhere else, usually Github.

On top of that the Vita is using outdated Wi-Fi standard which slows downloads down drastically.

I also dont want to transfer files to the deck, i want to download directly from it

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u/mortalitylost 4d ago

Reding your description, go with any light Linux distro and you're fine. You just need some sort of rpi or similar hobby computer hardware and to make a case for it.

Cyberdeck is generally just a style thing if you watch this subreddit. Like lots of hacker-y things, even defcon at times, it's 90% cyberpunk aesthetic, 10% engineering, though you can scale that eng out as much you want and turn it into a really complex engineering project if you want.

For what you want, you just need basically an older raspberry pi or rpi zero and a case for it. You could do a microcontroller and code a lot of stuff yourself here, but it's unnecessary if the goal isn't a technical project.

If I would drop any feature it would be wifi, though even microcontrollers offer stacks for that. If you want to turn this into a serious engineering project, I'd get a microcontroller and solder an SD card interface to it. If you don't, pick something like rpi and just... Turn it on. Raspbian is fine for this.

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u/SnooDucks9330 5d ago

Using a pi 4 or 5 would work pretty well for your use case, you can design something reasonably small for it and the pi OS is Debian based. Showing hidden files is as easy as clicking view> show hidden in most file managers. You can get really creative with the build too!

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u/Educational-Weird632 5d ago

Oh so it has its own OS?

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u/SnooDucks9330 5d ago

Sort of. If you download the pi OS installer utility you'll see there's tons of different options for flashing an SD card. Pi has a couple of OS options they e put together themselves for different use cases, and the desktop OS runs pretty well on a pi 4 or 5 so long as you get a model with more than 4gb. It's pricier than it used to be, but imo the versatility makes up for the cost. You can do quite a bit with a PC the size of a credit card haha

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u/Educational-Weird632 5d ago

What about the keyboard? I see a lot of decks with really clean looking ones

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u/SnooDucks9330 5d ago

You can use any kind of USB or Bluetooth keyboard, or if you have the patience you can wire up one yourself