If you are looking for a fun project aimed at making your own tablet computer at home based on the Raspberry Pi (RBPi) Single Board Computer, the DukePad is for you. As software, you will use the Raspbian Linux operating system and your environment will be OSGi-based JavaFX.

You can think of DukePad not as a product but an open-source set of plans and software freely available for assembling your own tablet for which, you will be using off-the-shelf components. At present, the DukePad software environment is only demo-quality, as more importance has been given to making the software for demonstration purpose rather than for real functionality.

Although, for the purpose of this guide, you need to name your RBPi with the host name of “dukepad”, you could have any other name of your choice. In addition, instead of letting the RBPi run X11, which it is fully capable of running, JavaFX will be used and it will take over the entire screen. However, while downloading the software into your RBPi, you may choose either to start up with X, or you could elect to download to your desktop PC and then scp/sftp the files into your RBPi.

To get started, you must set up your RBPi as usual; follow these steps if you do not know how. Setup you RBPi such that you have allotted a generous amount of memory to VRAM, also called graphic memory or Video Core. An even split of 256MB each for VRAM and for system memory is also acceptable. If you only have 256MB in total, you may also get by with a 128MB/128MB split, but you may have to tweak the amount of VRAM that FX will eventually use.

If you have not already downloaded and installed the latest JavaSE Embedded release, you may do so now. You can use either the weekly builds or the official builds, whichever is available. For the RBPi, you will have to look for Linux ARMv6/7 VFP, HardFP ABI. Other versions are not likely to work with RBPi.

For installation, you must uncompress the file you have downloaded and put it in a directory of your choice. A good choice would be to install it in the directory /opt; this will require you to assume the superuser status (root). Once you install JavaSE Embedded, it will include JavaFX as well. To play media, RBPi will need some additional packages. You will also need additional packages for configuring the auto-booting and the splash screen. In case you are not interested in creating a table device and you are simply planning to play with the DukePad software, you may safely skip the splash screen and auto boot instructions.

For the boot-loading screen, you need the “fbi” package and for being able to play media files, you have to download and install the “mpg321” package.

For building the body of DukePad, the CAD files are provided here. They contain the template for laser cutting the acrylics for the body, which is made from material of two thicknesses – 4.5mm and 3mm.