This pocket-sized cyberdesk built inside Altoids Tin is a portable workstation for geeks - Yanko Design

"The inventive YouTuber wanted to build a fully functional Cyberdesk inside of the Altoids tin. Sounds bizarre? Surely it is, given the size of the thing. In his video, he asked himself, "That looks like a tiny computer?" It was clear from the outset that the assembly would require the utmost level of detail and sourcing all the hardware inside the tiny housing. While it might not be the most powerful machine you can own, it surely is ultra-portable and quite nice nonetheless."

"Normally, Cyberdesks are built inside ammo cans, rugged Pelican cases, or anything that has a boxy form factor. The machines piqued in popularity during the 1980s after the science fiction novel Neuromancer. Altoid tins have all these attributes, just the smaller size makes them a very odd proposition in the Cyberdesk world. That said, he set out anyway on putting together the hardware."

"For the CPU, he used the Raspberry Pi Zero W he had lying around, and a 2-inch LCD from another unfinished project. The power comes from a 750mAh lithium-ion polymer battery. The real challenge was to find the tiny mechanical keyboard and fit it inside the small space. According to him, this was the most enjoyable part of the project, even though the video suggests it was a difficult one."

"It required learning how to construct the diode matrix for configuring the input, along with the assembling and soldering methodology of each of the keys. The final step here involved painting the keys with a white ink pen. Once this bit was taken care of, the DIY headed into the moderate level difficulty (at least for us)."

An Altoids tin can be repurposed as a fully functional Cyberdesk computer. The project uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W as the CPU, paired with a small 2-inch LCD. Power is supplied by a 750mAh lithium-ion polymer battery. The main difficulty is fitting a tiny mechanical keyboard into the limited space. Building the keyboard requires creating a diode matrix for input configuration and carefully assembling and soldering each key. After assembly, the keys are painted with a white ink pen. The result is a compact, ultra-portable machine despite limited power compared with larger systems.

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