Want to build your own $366.95 tablet based on the Raspberry Pi Model B? Well, now you can with the DukePad. You’ll also need to do some laser cut acrylics to make the actual case and then assemble it; it’s inspired by the PiBow case and comes as a set of cut acrylic sheets which stack up to hold all the components.
The software stack that the DukePad runs is based around JavaSE Embedded 8, JavaFX and it packages apps as OSGi modules. The instructions are all there to create the stack with its own DukePad app. Of course, with more powerful tablets like the Nexus 7 coming in at $200 or so, it is obviously not going to be an economically sensible alternative working tablet. But it does look like it could provide an interesting way to introduce kids to the concept that a tablet really is just a lot of components all wired up right.
The DukePad appears to be part of the OpenJFX on the Raspberry Pi project coming out of Oracle work. It can run with the 10" style tablet screens or with 3M’s $1550 M2256PW touch screen though they do say “In general a touch screen that is recognized by Linux and generates events EV_KEY, EV_ABS and EV_SYN will work with JavaFX”. The interesting part, for us at least, is how even Oracle uses the Raspberry Pi to enable hardware and software experimentation…
This article was imported from the original CodeScaling blog