Lilygo seems to have no BB keyboards anymore. If you check the product photos on the actual product pages, you’ll notice that they’ve developed their own keyboard and trackball solution.
Unfortunately an ESP32-based gadget is not really in the same class as a rpi-based device; it won't be able to send/receive email, browse internet, run applications like ping/traceroute/tcpdumpetc (useful as a mobile diagnostic tool), run MAME (seriously, a portable computer that doesn't have games is useless to me) and can't easily be programmed for.
At this point, and at these prices, there are very specific use-cases for esp32-based devices, and they are mostly all single-use devices (i.e. capture then process some video, caching it then transmitting it for remote storage is one use-case I have seen in the wild).
Those devices use the older style BB keyboard, the one with the trackball.
The Beepy from SQFMI is another Raspberry Pi platform with the trackpad keyboard.
I think the Beepy can be considered abandoned by now. All the YouTubers got one, but they never came back into stock. There’s a waiting list but I’ve signed up to that list like a year ago and heard nothing so far.
Lilygo seems to have no BB keyboards anymore. If you check the product photos on the actual product pages, you’ll notice that they’ve developed their own keyboard and trackball solution.
I suspect they bought and sold them all.
I heard somewhere those spare part Bb keyboards have basically dried up.
Unfortunately an ESP32-based gadget is not really in the same class as a rpi-based device; it won't be able to send/receive email, browse internet, run applications like ping/traceroute/tcpdumpetc (useful as a mobile diagnostic tool), run MAME (seriously, a portable computer that doesn't have games is useless to me) and can't easily be programmed for.
At this point, and at these prices, there are very specific use-cases for esp32-based devices, and they are mostly all single-use devices (i.e. capture then process some video, caching it then transmitting it for remote storage is one use-case I have seen in the wild).
An rpi device is much more general.
Those devices use the older style BB keyboard, the one with the trackball. The Beepy from SQFMI is another Raspberry Pi platform with the trackpad keyboard.
I think the Beepy can be considered abandoned by now. All the YouTubers got one, but they never came back into stock. There’s a waiting list but I’ve signed up to that list like a year ago and heard nothing so far.
Yes Beepy is abandoned, there is a community fork now called Beepis
https://bbkb-community.github.io/computers/beepis/