Let’s see if I can keep this relatively short:
I’m a woodworker, I do my design work in FreeCAD and then I print out my drawings on paper to carry out to the shop with me. It would be nicer if I had a shop-proof device to run FreeCAD in the shop with me because over the past year I found myself saying the following things in the shop a lot:
- “Wait, let’s go in and look at the 3D model.”
- “Ah dang I forgot to note this particular dimension on the drawing, let me go fix that.”
- “I’ll measure this part up then go in and do some drawing.”
So what does “shop proof” mean exactly?
-
Wood shop be dusty. Last year I hauled 250 gallons of sawdust to the dump. To me this means that a physical keyboard needs to be able to function if it’s been packed with dust and/or needs to be vacuum cleaner proof. I also think cooling fans are probably a bad idea; a passively cooled device is probably preferable.
-
Not many outlets in the shop, so it needs a good battery life. I actually don’t need a tremendous amount of performance, I’ve used a Raspberry Pi 3 for the kind of CAD work I do.
-
FreeCAD does not ship an APK so Android is no bueno, it’s gotta be GNU/Linux.
-
It needs decent usable Wi-Fi because I envision using Syncthing to keep my woodworking projects folder synced between my desktop and this device. It doesn’t necessarily need to get signal out in the shop (my phone barely does; I lose signal if I stand behind the drill press) but it does have to connect to my Wi-Fi when I carry it into the house.
I think this means I’m looking for an ARM tablet that can competently run Linux. Is there such a thing?
ADDENDUM:
Thanks to everyone who commented, I think I do have a plan of action: I’m gonna buy a used Lenovo!
To answer the question I posed, no it doesn’t seem that a Linux ARM tablet is really a thing yet. Commercial offerings that run Android or Windows on ARM are often so locked down that switching OS isn’t a thing, the few attempts at a purpose built ARM tablet for Linux like the PineTab just are not ready for prime time.
In the x86 world, it basically came down to 10 year old Toughbook tablets or 4 year old low-end 2-in-1s, and I think the latter won out just because of mileage and condition. A lot of the toughbooks out there will have 10 year old batteries in them, and they’ve been treated like a Toughbook for some or all of that time. The few Lenovo’s I’ve looked at are barely used, probably because of how Windows “runs” on them.
I’ll eventually check back in with progress on this front. Would it be better to add to this thread or create another?
Another option is to just have a big ass cable for HDMI and USB and have the actual computer hosted somewhere less dusty, like a office. Linus tech tips did a few videos talking about sending the computer signals from a gaming room out to a server rack and back. That could be the cheapest and most flexible option.
In my case this would require a 200 foot weatherproof HDMI and USB cable. My shop is a small building on the back corner of my property.
Looks like it might be as easy as running cat6. No idea but Google says this: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/uqtr2w/i_want_to_have_my_pc_accessible_from_two/
So I can either spend a few hundred dollars running a long ethernet cable in a conduit out to my shop, another bit of money on a Wi-Fi access point (I may or may not have a working one lying around) and then a couple hundred bucks on some Android device that can run some kind of remote desktop software…for maybe $600 to $1000 total plus the time and effort to dig a trench…
Or I could spend a couple hundred bucks on a machine that can just run the software I need it to run locally.
On the first option: I wasn’t suggesting all of that. The Ethernet seems to be able to run video signal and USB signal - maybe on one cable and maybe on 2 cables. So you’re just talking about a cat6 to HDMI/USB adapters and a monitor and a USB hub/ keyboard/ mouse in the shop, and a regular PC and adapters in the office. 500 feet of burial rated cat6 is around $160.
I was just offering another potential solution - no need to get snarky. If you need the power on your device, or you don’t want to fuck around with transferring files back and forth, that seems like a better option. But like I said initially - I haven’t done this - I just know that others have and it might be worth checking out.
Then put it in a box. You only need to be able to see a screen, not a computter, and only your input devices need to be exposed to the dust