This chunky palm-sized DIY laptop cleverly hides a split ergonomic keyboard

We’ve seen our fair share of small laptops over the past years, some of them made and sold by actual manufacturers, while others are works of love and passion by hobbyists. Tiny laptops, sometimes called palmtops, have the advantage of portability over normal notebooks, but they are terrible when it comes to comfort while typing. You can only cram so many keys in such a small space, forcing designers and users to perform finger acrobatics to activate additional keys. This is not to mention the awkwardness of having your fingers squeeze into such tight spaces. That is the problem that this bulky “palmtop” tries to address by miraculously fitting a slightly more comfortable keyboard in a 7-inch space.

Designer: Daniel Norris

This contraption doesn’t get the name Chonky Palmtop. Unlike other DIY laptop projects, this one makes no qualms about being a large plastic brick. It’s not going to be usable on your palm, though you probably won’t use it like that anyway. This laptop is unique because it attempts to make typing on this small size of laptop a little more enjoyable.

The secret is that it splits the keyboard into two halves, adopting a layout that is similar to those ergonomic keyboards you’d find in the market. Those, however, are giants compared even to regular keyboards, so the designer that created this wonder of engineering adopted a sliding mechanism that allows the halves to fan in and out as needed. Even this kind of keyboard layout is still no match for a proper typing tool, but it is loads better than the cramped keyboards on some 8-inch laptops.

That mechanism is one reason why this machine is so “chonky,” but it isn’t the only culprit. A full-sized Raspberry Pi 4 is used, along with additional components for the battery and the controller for the 7-inch touch screen display. There were very few compromises made so all the pieces have been used as they are. This results in a large chassis that can hold everything. These keycaps and your keyboard size are what make the laptop taller.

As with most DIY computers, assembling this one takes a lot of effort and soldering work. Fortunately, the thinking and designing involved are already done, and Daniel Norris generously lists almost everything you need. The software that you use on the RPi depends entirely on your preferences, although it is very compatible with certain flavors of Linux.

Of course, it does raise the question of whether you’d even want to use a computer of that size for your everyday needs, but it also raises the need for better computer keyboards in general. Hopefully, laptop designers will figure out a mechanism like this that will enable ergonomic keyboards to fit in cramped spaces, making portable computers less of a pain, literally.