I've been working for two years on an open source application platform for ESP32. It's a light-weight operating system that can download and run native applications. I wrote an article about the developments in the past year.
It's still not much, but more will be made in the coming months. I wanted to stabilize the APIs a bit more before making more apps.
I almost finished a Diceware app.
I have been considering that hardware, but the UI isn’t currently fit for such small screens. I’m considering T-Embed first, so when that works, it might be easier to adapt for Cardputer too.
Ease of development: programming WiFi, for example, takes easily 200 lines of code with ESP-IDF SDK. And your credentials will be baked into the ROM as plain text. With Tactility it’s stored safely and all you have to do is toggle the WiFi toggle on.
You can also run multiple apps alongside, making your ESP32 device more of a multitool like Flipper Zero.
You absolutely do not have to bake wifi creds into an esp32 app in plain text. ESP-IDF provides multiple ways to do this, the way I generally do it is to come up with a wifi AP, serve a web page that allows the user to input credentials, and then store those credentials in encrypted flash. All of this is very easy to do in ESP-IDF using C++.
your credentials will be baked into the ROM as plain text
what
If you can store this safely...so can other developers. The ESP32 has encrypted flash and critical data (like serials) can optionally be burned permanently without being readable through debug ports etc.
Interesting - never heard of it. I found another project(*) that runs Mobian on a Pi, so that should work. I intend to try out ParrotOS and/or Kali in the future. Perhaps some RTL-SDR tinkering too.
It's built with a Raspberry Pi CM4 and a 5" touch screen. It has about 6 hours of battery life and batteries are replaceable. The keyboard isn't great, but it's functional.
Inspiration and motivation came from Yarh.io, uConsole and various handheld PCs from the past.
For those (like me) being stuck on "skeuomorphic" in the second sentence:
> A skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort to speed understanding and acclimation. They employ elements that, while essential to the original object, serve no pragmatic purpose in the new system. Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal and a software calendar that imitates the appearance of binding on a paper desk calendar.
If I may, I'd like to mention a text editor that I am making as an example of relevant skeuomorphism. It's called Tentacle Typer.
It makes regular ol' .txt files in mostly the traditional way, but you write text documents as an eldritch tentacle monster with a magic mechanical typewriter inside a steampunk sandbox.
Oh sure! But I must admit, after looking at the video, that I still don't get the story behind it... Is it that one types orders for its character on a typewriter ? If so, that's a very nice twist to the usual text adventure !
For those (like me) who couldn't go a day without seeing a dozen articles about skeuomorphism just a few years ago. I'm here for you.
(I don't mean to detract from the parent comment, which is helpfully defining an unintuitive term, I'm just happy to see the conversation has moved on!)
The classic example being the Banana shaped phone receiver icon on android and ios. There are People alive today only know that shape as the call icon and never use that type of land line.
Not quite? Skeuomorphism is the usage of design elements that in the past were necessary. Many people know the word now due to the UI interface trend in the early 2000s. Skeuomorphism has meaning outside of UIs though. You can see it in your daily life. Common examples are laminate doors that have fake joinery, rivet patterns on a ceramic flower pot, or the lattice of a French window.
I think keyboards on smartphones are an example: they tend to resemble regular, physical desktop keyboards, rather than just a grid of letters. It seems like that's the main reason for the 'A' to be offset from the 'Q'. (Whereas, say, a Blackberry's keyboard was a grid of keys; and entering the symbol mode of smartphone keyboards is also a grid).
