TL;DR: I built a portable, battery-powered Raspberry Pi 5 computer with a touchscreen, 1 TB NVMe SSD, offline Wikipedia, worldwide maps, GPS/PPS time synchronization, SDR, educational videos, and a local Wi-Fi network. It runs entirely offline, has demonstrated more than 24 hours of battery life, and draws approximately 6.5 W with the screen off. Most of the internal hardware is custom-designed and 3D-printed.

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After several months of designing, 3D printing, wiring, and troubleshooting, I think I've finally finished one of my most ambitious Raspberry Pi projects!

I originally wanted to build a portable computer that could provide access to useful information without relying on the internet. Something I could take camping, use during a power outage, or just have available when normal communications aren't working.

What started as a Raspberry Pi sitting on a battery inside a rugged equipment case turned into a much bigger project than I anticipated.

I recently shared the finished build over on r/homelab, but I thought the Raspberry Pi community might appreciate some of the technical details.

The hardware

The system is built around a Raspberry Pi 5 (8 GB) running Debian 13, with a 1 TB NVMe SSD connected over PCIe Gen 3. It boots directly from the SSD.

Everything is housed in a rugged Jack Boss equipment case with a 10.1" touchscreen mounted in the lid.

The system also includes:

• 12.8 V, 20 Ah LiFePO4 battery (256 Wh)

• 5 V buck converter and fused power distribution

• RTL-SDR Blog V4 receiver with an external antenna connection

• ATGM336H GPS module with an external antenna

• Additional USB Wi-Fi adapter for connecting to existing networks

• External charging and USB-C PD connections

• Temperature-controlled cooling fans

• Small wireless keyboard/touchpad

Nearly all the internal mounting hardware, including the screen bezel, was custom-designed and 3D-printed.

What the Pi is running

Offline Wikipedia: Approximately 124 GB of English Wikipedia stored locally using Kiwix.

Worldwide offline maps: Approximately 139 GB of vector map data, plus additional regional terrain information. I built a local mapping interface using MapLibre that doesn't require internet access.

GPS: The Pi receives positioning data from the GPS module and displays its location on the offline maps. I also connected the module's PPS output to the Pi and configured chrony to maintain satellite-synchronized time without an internet time server.

Software-defined radio: I built a browser-based interface for the RTL-SDR receiver with frequency tuning, multiple analog modulation modes, spectrum and waterfall displays, audio streaming, and recording. I've tested it with NOAA weather radio and experimented with receiving aviation communications.

Offline video library: A small collection of educational videos that can be streamed locally.

Local message board: A simple message board accessible to devices connected to the kit.

Web dashboard: I built a dashboard that ties everything together, along with interfaces for system monitoring, managing downloads, and accessing the different applications.

The Pi broadcasts its own Wi-Fi network, so phones, tablets, and laptops can connect directly and access the services through a browser.

It can also join an existing network through Ethernet or a second Wi-Fi adapter. I configured mDNS so devices on that network can discover the kit by hostname without needing to know its IP address.

All the core functionality runs locally. Internet access is only needed when I want to download or update content.

Battery life

This was one of the things I was most curious about when I started.

With the touchscreen running and the SDR receiving NOAA weather radio, the system consistently drew approximately 8.7 W.

I completed an endurance test exceeding 24 hours, and the system was still running when I ended the test.

I've since added the ability to turn off the touchscreen while leaving the Pi and its services running. With the screen off, the entire system draws approximately 6.5 W, including the second Wi-Fi adapter.

That works out to roughly a 25% reduction in power consumption. The theoretical runtime at that draw is around 39 hours, although I haven't completed a full endurance test with the screen off.

I particularly like being able to close the kit, leave it running, and access everything from another device over Wi-Fi.

The 3D printing and electronics

This ended up being the most time-consuming part of the project.

I designed custom mounts for the battery, Pi, cooling system, antennas, power distribution, and other components. There were quite a few revisions as I worked through space constraints, cable routing, and airflow.

One of the more interesting challenges was the touchscreen.

The original screen has physical control buttons on the back, which wouldn't be accessible once it was installed in the case.

I replaced those with five TTP223 capacitive touch sensors mounted behind the 3D-printed bezel. Each sensor drives a MOSFET that simulates a button press.

I designed recessed channels into the bezel so the sensors detect a finger through the plastic. They work reliably, and I haven't experienced any false triggers.

The wiring was considerably more complicated than I expected. If I ever build another one, I'd probably design a small PCB to simplify it.

The cooling system was another fun challenge. I built a dedicated compartment for the Pi with a controlled airflow path. The fans turn on at 60°C and shut off below 50°C.

For anyone looking through the construction photos, the white 3D-printed components are early prototypes. The final components are black.

A note about the software

I want to be transparent that I used AI extensively to help develop the software.

I'm comfortable with Linux, networking, and systems administration, but I'm not a professional software developer.

I knew what I wanted the system to do, and AI helped me build the applications. There was still plenty of configuration, integration, troubleshooting, and testing involved.

The CAD design, 3D printing, electronics, wiring, and physical assembly were my own work.

I've learned a lot about software development and integrating different services throughout the process.

Final thoughts

I started this project knowing relatively little about CAD and 3D printing compared to what I know now. I also gained a lot of experience with electronics, power systems, GPS, radio, and designing around the limitations of a small enclosure.

It's not waterproof after all the modifications, but I consider it water-resistant when closed. I haven't formally tested that, so I'm not claiming any particular IP rating.

There are definitely things I'd do differently if I started over, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I've included photos of the finished system, some of the software interfaces, and earlier stages of construction.

I'm happy to answer questions about the hardware, software, power system, or anything else!

Hey, we've got a Raspberry Pi 5 hooked up to the TV with ethernet connected, streaming from the PC upstairs (also ethernet) via the Steamlink app. It's always worked great, but it's been failing since we upgraded to a 4k TV. On bootup it says the memory is straining at that resolution, and it suggests both lowering the resolution and turning off the active desktop. When we try to open it at 4k, the sound stops working entirely. Any recommendations on what to do? All the gaming strain is on the PC, so I feel like there should be a way to stream it locally at 4k? Not sure, we're at a loss.

Started as "is the shop freezing?" and kinda snowballed lol. It's a small Go app I threw together that pulls in my Zigbee sensors over MQTT and shows temp, humidity and power for the house, the shop, outside, and yes, the chicken coop door and heater.

Hardware is nothing fancy: a Pi 3 Model B+ that was sitting in a drawer, in a SmartiPi Touch case on the counter. The Pi just runs a full screen browser pointed at the Go app's page.

Every kiosk setup I've had before eventually turned into "grab a keyboard, walk over, figure out why Chromium died again," so this time I went lazy mode: flashed an SD card, paired it from my laptop, pasted the URL and done. If the browser hangs it restarts itself, and I can see temp, Wi-Fi and a screenshot of the screen from my desk, so I basically never touch it.

Pics are the dashboard, the Pi on the back of the case, the pairing screen (code blurred), and what it looks like before you give it something to show.

Anyone else running a little wall or counter screen off an old Pi? Curious what you're showing and what you'd add to this one?

A few years ago, my daughter got me a Raspberry Pi 4B (2GB) for Christmas. She knew I loved tinkering with gadgets and she suggested I create a media player or something similar. I booted it up and was impressed, but never had time to do anything with it.

I had been sailing and pouring my spare time into our sailboat. I had heard sailors were using Raspberry Pis on their boats, and thought it would be a great retirement project to figure out how to do the same with my Christmas gift. Then I retired last month.

I have learned a lot about the OpenPlotter project and Signal K and all the cool Pi focused software sailors use, but I found the defacto chartplotter (OpenCPN) hard to use. It has been around since 2005 and was designed before touch screens existed. It is still very popular and a great package, but I thought it would be fun and a good learning experience to create an alternative.

So I started working on something I named OpenWater Chartplotter for Raspberry Pi. If you are curious, you can download it here: https://openwaterplotter.com.

While building my own KVM, I made a few small HDMI capture boards around the Rockchip RK628H. The documentation is terrible around these chips, but the performance is impressive for the cost. We've moved the bridge onto our own boards now, so I've put all three up as open hardware: schematics, Fusion and EAGLE files, gerbers, JLCPCB BOMs, plus the drivers and installers. It can also do DSI, just need to update the pinout on the connector to match what you need.

*A 4B needs a 22-pin to 15-pin cable. TC358743 numbers are the makers’ ratings, RK628 numbers are measured.

I had to fix a few bugs in Rockchip’s stock driver to get it working on Rockchip boards. For the Raspberry Pi, I ported it to a standalone driver that talks to the RK628H over I2C and uses standard V4L2, so it runs on Raspberry Pi OS without Rockchip’s kernel.

CERN-OHL-S for the hardware, GPL for the software. Build them, change them, sell them, just keep your changes open.

Repo: https://github.com/WarpKVM/rk628-bridge-boards

Happy to answer questions, or try other hosts if someone has one!

Hi, I am currently in the process of finalizing my design for a PI switching PSU. The current bill of materials ends up being much cheaper than buying a USB hub and the appropriate cables. I was looking for advice on my design and flaws within it.

Additional Information:

Pi's used (x4): Raxda Pi Rock 4 Plus V1.73

Voltage Adjustment screw not pictured.

I took inspiration from this other post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprint/comments/gxm4gd/60a_raspberry_pi_cluster_power_supply/

Hi all. I had just flashed and started a fresh install of Pi OS & Pi hole on my Pi5. I wanted to see what KDE Plasma would look like on in and installed it. Immediately didn't like it and followed this command; sudo apt autoremove --purge kde* and that seems to have wiped out the Pi OS desktop too in the process.

I still have access to command line and it is still connected to my network.

I have had my Pihole for about a year and have been using Linux on my PCs for a couple months so I am still very green with Linux systems.

Is there a way to restore the desktop without doing another clean system flash?

It is a Pi5 with only Pi OS & Pihole installed.

Thank you for any and all help.

Edit to include Pi model

Hi all! I bought a Pico 2W. I was no electronic experience so tried to solve that problem. I decided to build a beginners friendly application to learn electronics. So here is the project I am building and maintaining. It is a desktop app ( supports macOS, Windows, Linux) for people starting out with the Pico 2 W.

You type an idea like "show the room's temperature and humidity on the OLED screen", and it gives you:

- a plan and a checked circuit (pins, resistors, breadboard layout),

- numbered build steps on a 3D breadboard, each with a short "why",

- MicroPython code, checked before you see it, built into one .uf2 file you drag onto the Pico.

The AI only handles the language part. Pin choices, layout and the safety rules (shorts, missing resistors, wrong voltages…) are ordinary tested code, so it can't hand you a circuit that fails the check.

New in v0.3.0:

- Change a finished project ("add a button that switches the display between icons and text"). Parts stay put and you only get the new steps.

- DHT11, slide switch and passive buzzer, all tried on a real Pico 2 W.

- Pick a local model through Ollama, or use an OpenAI key if you have one.

Honest limits: small local models still get harder projects wrong more often (5/10 vs 10/10 for GPT-6 Luna in my test with the new parts) and it supports a limited set of parts so far (LEDs, buttons, potentiometer, SH1106 OLED, plus the three new ones). I'm planning to add more components and more micro controllers in the future.

Project demo video: https://youtu.be/P4tDY0AZgy4

GitHub: https://github.com/Prestical/BreadPilot

Many 4-axis hot-wire foam cutters still need an old PC with a parallel port. With open_HOWI (a free, open-source hot-wire slicer and machine controller I wrote), a Raspberry Pi can sit next to the machine instead, connected over USB to a cheap GRBL board.

Setup on Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ccarl0/open_HOWI/main/packaging/raspberry-pi/install.sh | bash

It installs the app, grants USB access, sets a password, and starts it as a systemd service at boot. Then you open http://raspberrypi.local:8765 from a laptop, tablet or phone: design the part, preview the cut, and jog/zero/start/pause/stop the machine. Your laptop doesn't need to stay on during a long cut. There's also a --kiosk option for a touchscreen mounted on the cutter.

https://github.com/ccarl0/open_HOWI

I set up pi-hole for my home network with a pi 3B+ (and wrote a tutorial about it for my blog: https://beuseful.net/posts/pi-hole-raspberry-pi-setup), and it strikes me that this funky little board is the modern standard-bearer for withered tech.

Gunpei Yokoi, you might have heard of him, he created Game & Watch and Game Boy (and Metroid) (and Virtual Boy, but we don't talk about that) for Nintendo. He had this whole philosophy about redeploying tried and true components in innovative ways rather than chasing after the flashiest tech.

Legend has it that Yokoi was inspired to create the Game & Watch series when he observed a businessman playing with his calculator on the train. Later, he codified his approach as "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology" and wrote a book about it.

What I'm saying is, that's exactly what we have the Pi 3B+. While the Pi 4 and 5 are priced out of reach thanks to the RAMpocalyse, you can still find the third-generation boards at reasonable prices and still do cool projects with them (like pi-hole). Not bad for a board that launched in 2018 and should stay in production until at least 2030.

I've used all of 'em, but I'm convinced that 3B+ is the absolute pinnacle of the line. Yes, it sucks to have to use micro-usb for power, but at least it has a full-size HDMI connector and it doesn't need a tower fan for cooling.

So yeah, that's my gushing fan letter to the 3B+. Thanks for listening.

EDIT: fixed formatting

Pretty happy with result, one Raspberry Pi Pico 2W, a webcam, 4 JGA25 370 motors, 2x 18650, 2 DRV8833 and i can chase my cats around the house and inspect crawlspace, can share the code if anyone wants to do the same, suggestions on housing welcome

UPDATED WITH SOME PHOTOS

Hi everyone!

I’ve been using a Raspberry Pi 5 as my Wi-Fi router for my entire apartment, and I’ve now published the project as open source.

The goal was to have direct control over the whole setup: wireless configuration, DHCP, DNS, routing, firewall rules and the scripts that keep everything running.

The hardware is probably pretty unusual ...

- Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB RAM.

- A 52Pi B14 PCIe switch HAT and two Waveshare MiniPCIe adapters.

- Two MediaTek MT7915E Wi-Fi cards.

- USB NVMe storage because pcie 32bit dma to make wifi cards work,

- An USB hub HAT

- 52Pi P01 power board

- Custom 3D-printed mounting plates and antenna supports.

The PCIe cards share the Pi’s single PCIe uplink through the switch.

All is managed through Docker Compose with three interconnected services:

• Pi-Dock-Wifi: hostapd, separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz access points, dnsmasq, routing, firewall rules and a web dashboard.

• Pi-hole: DNS filtering using the official image.

• ttyd: an SSH terminal accessible through the dashboard.

There are also health checks, Ethernet recovery handling, logs and network statistics.
Pi-dock-wifi is designed to repair itself as much as possible.
The interface and project logs support English and Italian, selected through a Compose variable.

I’ve included the Dockerfiles, scripts, configuration examples, hardware documentation,
STL/OpenSCAD files, boot settings and the complete kernel configuration used by my router. There’s also a guide covering kernel compilation, installation, verification and recovery.

This project uses host networking and a privileged router container.
The host needs compatible kernel drivers and AP-capable radios.

The running router is my reference system; a fresh installation following the complete public guide still needs independent validation.

Repository: citroale90/pi-dock-wifi
English README: Overview and documentation

The project is GPL-3.0.
Feedback on the network configuration, documentation and reproducibility would be particularly useful! I started with this project in 2020 during the pandemic and it has evolved to where I am now.

Back

Modem

Iperf

835 Mb/s upload and 639 Mb/s download

Okay! Got a Pi 4 Cana Kit yesterday. Set up the Pi today and everything was great: install was smooth, peripherals worked, UI loaded on the monitor, no issues.

My reason for buying a pi was to use it with Home Assistant. When I went to install using the imager tool I couldn't get past step 2 ( select storage) because no storage options appeared.

Okay, I said. It must need a different SD card to install to. Since it doesn't have another reader, I grabbed my USB3 dock with a built-in one and plugged it into one of the USB3 slots on the Pi. The dock's light came on, great. I plugged my peripherals into it. No response; okay, the Pi must not have enough power to support a dock. I unplug it and plug my peripherals back into their original slots. No harm, no foul.

Testing that dock was apparently the worst thing I could have done, because since then nothing works. Nothing on the monitor, no peripherals. I checked on the forums and tried a few basic things-- swapping the cables around, trying different ports, trying a different PSU, nothing.

I'm not techie at all, so I'm at a loss. I hope I didn't brick a brand new pi by trying to see if a dock would work.

Edit: Solved by getting a new Micro SD. I successfully loaded it with Home Assistant OS, plugged it into the pi, and it worked again! Thanks all.

Hi all! I've been building Argon Control Center, an open-source (MIT) Rust app to monitor and configure a Raspberry Pi in an Argon40 case. It's at v0.5.0 and I'd love some testers beyond my own Pi 4.

Built with the help of AI coding tools.

What it does

• Live dashboard (CPU per core, temperature, memory, disks, network, GPU load, firmware throttling flags)

• Fan curve editor for argononed with a live operating point, profiles and manual speed

• Board-aware overclocking with safety rails: blocked after under-voltage, one-shot trial boot (tryboot), stability test before keeping the settings

• GPIO Lab: live 40-pin header, pin inspector with the equivalent pinctrl/gpioset/Python commands, logic analyzer, serial and I2C console

• KDE Plasma 6 widgets (CPU, thermal, GPU, GPIO...)

• Terminal UI that opens automatically over SSH, with the same controls

• No setuid: hardware access via udev rules/groups, system changes via Polkit with backups

Tested so far: Pi 4 + Argon ONE, Armbian (KDE Plasma 6), arm64.

Looking for testers on:

• Raspberry Pi 5 / Argon ONE V3 / Argon EON

• Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm/Trixie, 64-bit), Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux ARM

• GNOME or other desktops, and headless over SSH

Packages (.deb, .rpm, Arch Linux ARM) are on the releases page: https://github.com/wendelmax/argon-control-center/releases

Running argon-control-center --doctor and pasting the output in an issue helps a lot, as do screenshots of anything that looks off.

Repo: https://github.com/wendelmax/argon-control-center

Feedback, bug reports and feature ideas are very welcome!

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W stuck on the back of a Pimoroni Inky Impression 7.3" (the 6 colour Spectra one), in a normal picture frame on my shelf. The video is the real frame running demo mode, refreshes are sped up because a full e-ink redraw takes ~15 sec lol

What it shows – each screen is a "plugin":
- weather + calendar (Open-Meteo, no API key)
- daily chess puzzle from the Lichess API
- question / quote of the day
- word clock
- spotify cover of whatever is playing (takes over while music runs)
- bin days from an iCal link, birthdays, countdown, sudoku, DWD weather warnings, river levels, a stock watchlist, solar output, guest wifi QR and a few more

The part that got a bit out of hand: there are 13 designs (bauhaus, newspaper, art deco, pixel game, zen, swiss, memphis, blueprint, botanical, chalkboard + 3 basic ones) and every plugin has its own layout in every one of them. In the rotation you can give each plugin its own design, so my weather is a newspaper front page and the chess puzzle is memphis. Everything is translated into 12 languages incl. dates and holidays.

Some stuff I figured out along the way:
- Spectra 6 only has black, white, red, yellow, green and blue, so every layout is drawn around those colours instead of dithering
- it only redraws when the image actually changes, plus quiet hours at night
- the Pi Zero 2 W is plenty, its a Flask app + a background thread
- every plugin renders on a laptop too (`python -m inkyframe.dev render chess --sample --theme pixel`) so I barely touched the Pi while building
- theres a demo mode that cycles through plugins / designs / languages with sample data only, made for filming this without my own data on screen

The thing I actually wanted to share: I built this together with Claude. I had the idea, the hardware and a pretty clear picture of what I wanted, Claude wrote most of the code, the plugin system, the web app, the translations and even the design mockups. Im not a developer and honestly this would of taken me months alone. It was basically: describe what I want → look at it on the frame → ask for changes → repeat.

So its less "look at my code" and more "look what you can do now if you have an idea and a Pi lying around".

Hardware:
- Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
- Pimoroni Inky Impression 7.3" (Spectra 6)
- picture frame
Setup is git clone + one install script.

Each plugin is one python file, so writing your own is pretty easy. More plugins coming, ideas and PRs welcome!

Code + install guide: https://github.com/charwege/inkyframe

I built an ARM64 assembly engine for d1-2B on a 4 GB Raspberry Pi 4 using Codex and autoresearch.

Question attention picks 48 of 300 image positions for multiple choice. Direct counts keep all 300 active. I also enabled all 11 packed Q6 batches for counts and prepacked Q4/Q8 weights for NEON.

Median on four matched Pi runs per task: 28.02 s vs 70.19 s for multiple choice and 43.55 s vs 70.65 s for counts against llama.cpp. Both engines got 8 of 16 counts exactly right and agreed on all 16.

Source and benchmark data: https://github.com/DarvinX/d1-pi4-asm

Set up Pi print server, and connected a Zebra ZTC_GK420d label printer via usb. Prints labels perfectly in windows.

My issue is when I want to print a label say from pirate ship via airprint the labels do not fit correctly on the label

What I found is in options for paper in airprint is A4 and A5, I think I need to add an option to choose 4x6 (which is the size of the paper.) In the printer options of OpenPrinting CUPS under administration I set the defaut media size to 4.00 x 6.00 and that did not fix the issue. How can I add the paper / label size as an option in air print?? If so how?

Thanks in advance.

I am building a device that connects a Raspberry Pi 4B rev 1.1 (4 GB) to a RXB6 433Mhz Superheterodyne Wireless Receiver Module in order to intercept transmissions from a Maverick ET-732 BBQ thermometer (schematics here: http://www.fcc.io/N9ZMAV221). In previous iterations of this project using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, I had difficulties with the reception range and was only able to receive data when the transmitter was 1-2 meters from the device. I expected to be able to receive signal from at least 10 meters away if not more. I was using a quarter wavelength dipole antenna (17.3cm in length) soldered to the ANT pin on the module sticking straight up in the air mounted on a protoboard for the Raspberry Pi Zero W. I think perhaps there was some interference from the other components on the board. I did not include any ground plane shielding, I figured the protoboard would do that. Here is an image of my previous device on a Raspberry Pi Zero W /preview/pre/introducing-version-3-an-open-source-bbq-temperature-v0-l3awpv0rnq9h1.jpg?

I used ChatGPT to help me design an improvement, any engineers that can weigh in on this suggestion before I try to build it?

My first keyboard project. Cheap 12mm tactile push buttons wired to a Pi Pico. Companion app written in MicroPython allows you to save keyboard profiles and control the LED.

It's a poor soldering job but it works and I'm thrilled.

I've been looking for a nice NTP clock for my desk for quite some time, but couldn't really find anything that matched what I wanted while still being reasonably affordable. So I decided to build one myself!

I had an old Raspberry Pi 3B lying around collecting dust, so I figured this would be a fun way to put it to use.

The Pi runs a small OLED display and gets its time from my other Raspberry Pi, which acts as a GPS-synchronized NTP server.

Besides showing the live time and date, the display also shows some GPS statistics pulled from Prometheus.

Nothing too fancy, but a fun little project that gives an old Raspberry Pi a second life. And it looks pretty nice on my desk!

For some reason this subreddit doesn't allow amazon links, so the 3rd picture is the display I used.

I seem to be having issues with wireless devices on my Pi 3 and Pi 4. I don't understand why though.

My Pi 4 is running LibreElec, a really crummy OS that hasn't been updated since the day I installed it even with automatic updates turned on.

My Pi 3 is running the basic Raspian OS or whatever that thing is called, so it can run a single python script (telegram bot).

I have a wireless keyboard for the Pi 3 that has a tiny USB receiver plugged in. However, it can't hardly function more than 2 feet away. It acts as if it is out of range, or sends too many commands like if I hit a key once it acts as if I hit it 5 times or more.

I have a small remote for the Pi 4, it actually works from across the room, but it -sometimes- acts as if I'm holding down the power button rapidly flickering the power menu on and off, or acts as if another button got stuck being held down. Other times it doesn't register a press at all. The remote its self flashes red as if its processing some sort of input shortly after use a lot. I kinda need a better remote that doesn't work the way this one does, I'm getting annoyed with it at times.

Today it just stopped working entirely until I switched the USB receiver to a new slot. That is, after I got angry enough and smashed the remote a bit too hard. Worried I may have broken it I opened it up, looked inside, not a single thing inside the remote was damaged except the plastic case.

It was only after examining the inside of the remote that I thought, what if its the Pi? I switched the keyboard from the 3 to the 4, it had the same issue, it couldn't function more than 1 foot away. It was absolutely pathetic.

Keep in mind, I used this keyboard with my laptop and a desktop computer in the house too. From up to 30 feet away smoothly without a single issue. This makes no sense because if its interference, it should happen regardless of the device you use it with. I'm starting to suspect there's a flaw in the design of the Raspberry Pi boards that causes devices like this to just fail to work right which you know, really sucks. I thought about getting a bluetooth device instead but on the Pi 4, I disabled bluetooth for the time being since I wasn't using it, and bluetooth wasn't really super reliable in the past for other things.