Cardputers

M5Stack has a kickstarter for their new Cardputer Zero, a pocket sized Raspderry Pi computer module 0 computer. It’s low power but plenty for most computing tasks.

Actually, let’s talk about that for a second.

Modern computers are insanely overpowered and they don’t feel like it. This is because our programming languages are several layers of abstraction away from machine code. This page is html rendered by Python translated to some variation of C and compiled on the fly into machine code in order for the processor to understand what needs to be done to send the visitor data. All of this happens fast because it’s on a system with high end but dated hardware that is still capable of handling all that as a minor background task. If I got a ton of visitors I would have to change strategy to serve static pages that could be sent without as much processing time needed. However, the exact same processes can happen much more efficiently if my code were not several layers of abstraction away from machine code, or if it were compiled before running.

Anyway, low power computers like the pi zero are very capable and they have more processing power than most home computers from the 90s which could do everything modern computers can, just not as fast (even ray traced 3D stuff, just very slow). But I’m not here to talk about niche or high performance computing, I’m here to talk about everyday use.

Most of us browse the internet, watch videos, listen to music, use office apps, and play some casual games. The Pi Zero can do all of that. Add a tiny keyboard, screen, and battery and you have an everyday carry computer that fits in your pocket. Just like your phone but free from predatory ecosystems designed to suck your money into a big tech corporation.

Further add on a low power, long range wireless transceiver and mesh networking software and you dive into a different place altogether. Let’s talk about Reticulum.

Reticulum is a networking stack designed to work over “any” interface. It is encrypted, anonymous, and right now incredibly niche. It is also growing. On top of Reticulum are some applications you can choose from that mostly do the same thing, enable communication free of existing infrastructure or on top of it. One of these is Nomadnet, it is a client that uses Reticulum for messaging but also lets you serve Micron pages to peers on the mesh.

Micron is a markup language like HTML but, designed to be data lite. A micron page can behave like a web page but without fancy tables images, or data heavy elements like scripts and css. Your Nomadnet client can host these pages and you can build a backend to turn them into a web app. I have seen some forums, chat rooms, RSS syndicators, and other things that take advantage of the client nodes internet connection to provide services over the mesh network.

You don’t even need a “computer” to access this network. There are reticulum clients made for microcontrollers like the ESP32. I am using one called Ratspeak on my T-Deck to send and receive messages. That one doesn’t have support for Nomadnet though and browsing nomad pages has become a fun activity for me.

Nomadnet reminds me of the old internet. When anyone could make a free page on Geocities and put whatever they wanted out there for everyone to see. But it’s reminiscent of what came before too, when you would dial into a bbs and leave a message for someone or you download a floppy image someone posted. The internet I missed out on, full of enthusiastic users who just wanted to share knowledge over a new medium.

wait… this was supposed be be about cardputers. ADHD is not great for staying on topic.

Well, mesh networking is what I plan to use these things for, I’m in the kickstarted for 2 cardputers zero and I have ordered the cardputers-adv, the ESP32 powered one. I also have my T-deck which I will see if I can find a Nomad firmware for. I am also getting some more Heltec V4 to use as Rnodes to provide an interface to access to reticulum over LoRa.

It’s an exciting time to be a nerd but I guess it always is. Back in the 70s there were ham radio operators building on the fundamentals of modern internet with AX.25 and TNC modems, stuff that’s STILL in use today.

Im going to see about building something for nomad net. Lets see how it goes.