Recently one of my friends won a permit to raft down the Grand Canyon for 21 days, I’m going along rowing one of the boats.
I want to find a cheap little laptop, that is at least semi waterproof / rugged so I can put Linux on it and get data from some of the sensors im bringing (spectrometer, ph, etc), plus do a little programming in the evenings.
It really doesn’t need to be powerful, i would just bring my MacBook but I don’t want to break something expensive.
Secondary objectives are at least reasonable battery life, but not too much of an issue with the solar and batteries we’re bringing.
My general recommendation would be to just get you a secondhand thinkpad and a padded sleeve to store it in, but that doesn’t come with any water resistance.
Rugged laptops are a bit of a niche product, you’ll probably need to pay a small premium for the feature set you’re looking for.
They are pretty dang cheap, and could but in dry box, this might be the most reasonable solution— though the AC power requirement is a slight drag over usbc
Regardless of what you purchase, you can absolutely power/charge a barrel jack laptop via DC. Find a spare jack that fits, or sacrifice the stock unit, and wire it into a dcdc converter.
Have you considered not bringing a laptop with you. I know that it sounds daunting but consider giving it a try just to see how it may affect your trip not to have access to electronics
OP is cute thinking they be programming in the evenings after a full day of rafting.
OP. Just enjoy living outside of the computer. If you really must make a data memento, make the simplest possible recording device for your sensors. Then explore that data when you’re back home. There will be plenty of time when there be no starlit skies and friends around a campfire.
Yep. Just like, enjoy nature? (Coming from a homeland enthusiast)
I would just use an android phone or tablet with a USB C hub
Yeah that would be fine, but really would prefer Linux if possible so I don’t have to faf about with touch screens (sand is not their friend)
That’s why I suggested the hub, then you can use mouse and keyboard
Use a mobile phone instead.
Off the beaten path suggestion: clockwork uconsole. Runs a cm4 or cm5. Small with a keyboard. Love the piss out of mine but at least on cm4 not terribly performant. But with expanded access to io depending on what you’re doing youay find more use for interfacing.
Whoa hadn’t heard of them, surprisingly affordable too, I’ve never used a physical thumb keyboard but could be interesting and could always bring an external keyboard for programming— very temping considering the upgrade path only caveat is whether it would be here in time. Thank you!
If you don’t need anything powerful, consider grabbing an old toughbook or the like. They’re reasonably rugged and are fairly water resistant. They’ve also been around for a while, so you can grab an older used copy pretty cheap. I can’t speak to Linux compatibility, but they are x86 computers at their core.
This would be a good idea— they are pretty cheap def appreciate the ruggedness
I’d just find a waterproof container and put it in that if you aren’t planning to actually use it around water.
Is there anything preventing you from using a raspberry pi?
Nope just would need to build an enclosure for it— which would be fun— just unsure if I can build something robust enough that won’t fail in me in the time that I have
You could get a small one of those Pelican-style hard cases and make some small notches at the lid to run your cables through. You could even use a phone (many in the last 5ish years have some degree of waterproofing) as a monitor and keyboard and just chuck the Pi Box in a corner for ultimate portability/size reduction.
