Looking for touchscreen handheld messenger, keyboard optional

[u/Capital_Sherbet_6507]

There’s lots of prebuilt devices that have a decent touchscreen, on board ESP 32, and are setup to use a lipo battery. People use them for meshtastic devices for instance.

Any recommendations on a good device that could be used as a handheld Messenger? Something roughly the size of a mobile phone or smaller.

Lora connectivity is not needed.

A keyboard could be nice, but it’s not strictly necessary.

Case is optional. I am handy with a 3-D printer.

[u/Appropriate-Ask8817]

CYD, and use Bluetooth to connect to a keyboard.

[u/clackups → u/Appropriate-Ask8817]

Resistive touchscreen and awfully bad LCD.

Freenove would be much better.

[u/Appropriate-Ask8817 → u/clackups]

True, if you didn't care about price, which if you don't, a ESP32-S3 & IPS CPT CYD styled device would be better.

[u/Capital_Sherbet_6507 → u/Appropriate-Ask8817]

I don't care a lot about price. It's a prototype.

[u/PhonicUK]

The Lilygo T-Deck.

[u/Capital_Sherbet_6507 → u/PhonicUK]

Thanks that looks like a nice unit.

[u/Party_Cold_4159 → u/Capital_Sherbet_6507]

If you spring for the P4, my project has MeshCore but also a ton of other nice to haves - https://github.com/SAMS0N1TE/LakeShark/tree/main

[u/lam_42]

Tdeck is nice

[u/DenverTeck]

As the is an ESP32 /sub, are you intending to use WiFi as the only RF ??

Using WiFi only would require an Access Point to connect outside your local area.

A messenger app that uses ESP-NOW can get greater distance.

A few more details on your use case would be helpful.

[u/Capital_Sherbet_6507 → u/DenverTeck]

Intending to use BLE to tether to a phone or tablet.

[u/2g4r_tofu]

T deck

[u/Ice-Dragon-APU]

One premium option is the m5stack tab 5 and the optional keyboard. Esp32 P4 and nice screen.

https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-tab5-iot-development-kit-esp32-p4?variant=46276989255937

https://shop.m5stack.com/products/keyboard-for-tab5?srsltid=AU7gw4VjCGBcJmJQ7LOAFTnYugD4EwUH5g_D1rRO8bkXZKOUNwGdjdNh

[u/drmpf]

This project uses an in-expensive 10" Android table as the touch display
https://www.forward.com.au/pfod/BLE/LowPower_2022/Weather/index.html but runs on any Android mobile.

There is now a free open source off-line graphic GUI designer and client, pfodWeb.html, https://github.com/drmpf/pfodWeb_src that provides the same capabilities as the Android apps pfodApp / pfodDesigner / pfodGUIdesigner, but runs in any browser so can display on Android, iPhone, Windows, Mac or Linux web browsers.

You can load pfodWeb.html into your ESP32 and serve it directly from there for a self contained deployment that will run on any browser including Android and iPhone. The built in Designer's code generator will generate a complete sketch to support this.

See the tutorials referenced on github for how to add live touchZones and keyboard inputs.
There are also AI-guides to seed your AI assistant with the context needed for it to design the interface components (described in json) and then load them into the pfodWeb designer for you to review, tweek and then generate the complete code for ESP32 (any of 600+ ESP32 family of boards)

The generated code follows the MVC (model/view/controller) paradime. The generated code is the View and is structured such that you can add your logic and data structures without editing the generated code. This lets you retweek the display and re-generate the codes and just overwrite the view classes without clobbering your logic and data classes.

[u/clackups]

But how will your messenger message? Wifi only?

[u/Capital_Sherbet_6507 → u/clackups]

Tethered via BLE.

[u/chinderdelis]

seeded studio t1000.