I dislike how unrepairable laptops have become so I built my own. My own smallrebelion against corporations and their battle against our right to repair. 

The cyberdecks brain is a Lenovo thinkcenter mini computer which is a full x86 computer with removable CPU, RAM and storage. 

The main body is made from 20x40 aluminum extrustion and a Lenovo VESA mount. The handle is a 20x20 aluminum extrustion. The power bank holder is 3d printed PETG. The brown dots are firction pads to prevent it from slipping.

I have paired it with a ALFA AWUS036AXML wifi adaptor for pentesting the full WiFi 7 spectrum of 2.4, 5 and 6 Ghz. It also features Monitor Mode and Packet Injection.

Battery life is not a problem with a 74Wh power bank the cyberdeck can run for ~8 hours. Then it can be swapped out for a fresh power bank with the Velcro strap.  It can also be powered off any USB C 65W PD wall plug. 

I built a home lab which runs out of a 36U server rack in my lounge. It runs my flats network with a seprate router, WiFi access point and 16 port switch. The servers hosts services for my friends, like Minecraft and Plex. It has taught me how to harden and isolate internet-facing systems. 

I am currently migrating to using proxmox and containerising my services for greater flexibility and possible clustering my machines together. 

I built the controller first. The first version used a Arduino nano and 433 MHz radio. The radio was reliable and long-range. I could control the rover from the other side of my house. However the latency was very noticeable with a delay between moving a joystick and the rover moving.

I upgraded to an ESP32 to solve this problem. The built-in ESP-NOW protocol is long-range, reliable and fast. The controller currently has 2 joysticks, 3 potentiometers, 2 toggle switches and 2 momentary switches.

This is the second iteration of the robotic arm. The previous version was built from 3d printed PLA and carbon fibre rods. It suffered from a lack of power due to the limited gear ratios I could achieve with 6mm timing belts and matching gears. I needed a different way to gear down my motors. 

After some research, I found relatively cheap planetary gearboxes on Aliexpress. I then redesigned the arm to use these. I built the current arm from 3mm aluminium that I cut by hand and 3d printed PLA. The current arm uses 3 stepper motors for the 3 primary axis. The x-axis and secondary y-axis motors are geared down with a ratio of 1:13. The primary y-axis motor is geared down with a ratio of 1:13. 2 servo motors control the rotation and opening/closing of the gripper.

This is the third iteration of the rover. The first version was not finished and was built from sheet metal with 3d printed PLA wheels. I found that it was difficult to align the wheels on the sheet metal.

This resulted in the second iteration which was entirely 3d printed. The body was broken up into 4 parts as the whole body would not fit on my print bed. The 3d printed parts made it extremely easy to align everything as I could model holes and slots for everything to fit into. However, it also took a long time to print and PLA is expensive. The mechanical system for this iteration was also far too complicated which resulted in it only working once.

I then redesigned the rover. The body is made from a sheet of 20mm MDF and the side panels are made from 3mm aluminium. I chose to use MDF as it was cheap and I could easily cut it accurately with a circular saw. I chose to use Aluminium for the sides as it is easy to accurately drill, file and cut. I simplified the mechanical system for the current iteration. The motors drive a roller which is pushed against the wheel causing it to rotate.