We love Raspberry Pi cyberdecks and Raspberry Pi-powered arcades—so why wouldn't we love the two put together? Today, we're sharing a cool project put together by maker and developer _Kniives, as he's known over at Reddit, who has created not one but two Pi-powered arcade cyberdecks that are completely portable. These builds look very cool and have all the benefits of a gaming console paired with a mini PC on the go.
According to _Kniives, the idea was to make the systems primarily for gaming. They're running Lakka as the main operating system—a Linux-based emulation platform that makes it easy to play around with all sorts of consoles and ROMs. In the example pictures, it looks like Kniives is running a Game Boy Color emulator, but you could play with all sorts of systems, ranging from the Nintendo 64 to the PlayStation 1.
As we mentioned, cyberdecks are portable, but what's the point of making something portable if it's not easy to carry? _Kniives decided it would be well worth making the units easier to transport by fixing them up with a modular Orbit Gear sling. This lets you carry them by throwing the sling over your shoulder.
From what we can see, _Kniives uses a Raspberry Pi 5 as the main board to power the portable arcades. It's powered by an Anker 26,800 mAh battery, which apparently can get up to 7 hours of use when considering the screen, audio output, and controller. Your ability to emulate various consoles will vary depending on the Pi you use, so the choice to use the latest Pi 5 is definitely a winner in our book.
The hardware is mounted inside the case using Velcro, so it is also very modular. This makes it possible to add and remove components, change their purpose, or upgrade hardware as desired. Kniives decided to use Lakka as the main operating system, but you could get away with using something like RetroPie if that's more your speed.
If you want to look at this Raspberry Pi project in action, you can check out the original thread shared on Reddit.
