So I finally jumped on the bandwagon and started working on a DIY...

So I finally jumped on the bandwagon and started working on a DIY, special snowflake laptop for ease of upgrades and maintenance.

It needs an enclosure, but otherwise I'm very happy with it. I'm currently using it to post this, and it works fine except for the expected drawbacks (clunky, low battery life).

I would love to know if there are any Li-ion charging boards designed specifically for PCs. Right now I'm using a $5 ching chong board and I have doubts about its ability to protect the cells. I saw a BMS once that could even hook into the computer's power system like a laptop battery and report its charge status, but I can't remember who sold it. It was also very expensive, like $200-300.

how much did you spend in that? I looks unconfortable

Cool laptop, user. Wanna bring it to the White House?

I'm also keen to do this, looks quite difficult for the cost / effort ratio though.

Also for the charging board, rip one from a dead laptop?

What you see here cost about $400. In reality, it was a lot more than that because I tried a lot of designs that didn't work.

It is very uncomfortable. It will eventually have an aluminum enclosure, but first I need to decide where to best place all the ports and indicators. That's why I'm using it in its half-finished state.

LOL, I'm not expecting to ever get this past TSA but for home and field work it should be inconspicuous.

What were the other designs that you tried? Why didn't they work?

If there's enough interest, I'll sell some kits once I get the case designed.

I had heard that laptop charging boards have a short lifespan, but yeah, that is a possibility.

Different motherboards and different component layouts. I had to strike a balance between making it compact, and making it easy to work on and upgrade.

Cool project, have you got any other pictures of your work? What's its guts?

Is the hardware free as in freedom?

Post speccy and cinabench run.

You need to gt good cells, idk how many you are using. You will need a bms to balance charge them if you dont want to charge them manually.
Just find a power supply that fits the bms input. Dont worry about making it a "laptop charger" thats retarded. You just need to supply the right voltage with adequate current capabilities.

Hey user, this is very interesting, may i ask you where/how did you learn this? I want to learn about this

I'd also like to see this OP.

Look at his hand. He is a fucking white male

Right now I'm using a Thin ITX mainboard with an Atom processor because it's only supposed to pull 5W. I think it would, if I didn't have a cheap display controller hogging all the power. If I'm happy with the way it runs I'll upgrade to Core i3 or i5.

I'll try to post more pics as I work on it. Until now it wasn't really in a usable state.

I know I've seen a BMS with ACPI functionality, I just can't remember where. Maybe a German site? Germany uses a lot of mini PCs for handhelds in all their factories & warehouses.

The trickiest parts were the battery & display.
I just looked up how to care for Li-ion cells and how to wire the LVDS display.

>german site
just got a bms off of ebay for an ebike or something. make a 14.2v pack and get a voltage converter to take it down to 12v or whatever you need.
how many cells do you have and what capacity?

I have a 4s2p pack of NCR18650 cells. Most laptops are actually 3s, but my board takes 12-20 volts and a 4s pack powers it over more of its input range without a DC-DC converter.

ACPI isn't strictly necessary, but I would like to find a BMS with more documentation and actual datasheets. I am concerned about the quality of the chinkshit boards because the cells seem to be losing capacity a lot faster.

Congrats, one of the worst and most poorly executed DIY projects I've seen this year.

What cpu are you running?
just realized you said acpi and not "proprietary power data managment bullshit api" that some battery backups have.
Yea I would want acpi too but you could always add a toggle switch and pic related.

I cant see the guts in there, what did you cram inside that thing?

Someone’s envious

Hey, I'm also DIYing a laptop like that. How did you make your keyboard work? And what is the material you're using for the case? Could you post more photos, please?

looks like shit desu

>open source

It's a pretty cool way to spend your free time desu. Good for you OP. I don't know shit about building computers but maybe you could design and print something with a 3D printer?

Nice work! I've been looking to roll my own lappy for a while as well, but I don't know where to start. What are the main differences between doing something like this and building a desktop PC?

jesus why did you use ccfl backlight.

Nice clock Ahmed

Atom, see above:
Not sure if ACPI is the right term -- whatever lets you see the % charge on your desktop.

I gutted a Cherry g84-4100 and connected it to a USB header. Right now the thing is made out of aluminum perf board so I can unscrew and move stuff around if I have to. I'll post more pictures tomorrow.

I considered a lot of materials, but I believe the best option is folded & riveted sheet aluminum like Lian Li.

Battery & display. Otherwise it's just like case modding. You need a good BMS and a motherboard with an eDP connector.

I was an idiot and just grabbed the cheapest panel I could find, because I wasn't sure if this project would work. The current draw from that thing is enough to burn my balls off.

>Atom, see above:
you cant get unsoldered mobile processors like that. If you go the full desktop route expect the be blowing though power left and right. my i7 desktop takes about 70 watts on idle using my igpu.
idk what all acpi does, I thinki t also controlls the ability to shot down the computer properly as oppose to just pulling the power plug.

what's your screen resolution?

it even has an analog, looks cute, keep the good work, user.

do you have the Git, Instructables, Youtube video, or any instructions to do one like this?

>he thinks someone this capable would run windows

use a cordless tool battery and charger

8 cells * 2700mah/cell * 14 volts / 70W ~= 3hrs.

But you're right, that is way too much power to put in a laptop, just from the heat alone.

I'm looking at the "T" versions of Intel CPUs which, I believe, are capped at 35W TDP. From what I've heard, they don't pull more than 15W at idle.

You can also get ITX boards from Congatec with soldered-down CPUs that are even more efficient, but part of my reason for doing this in the first place was to avoid special hardware.

1280x800 LOL

At some point I'll replace it with a panel that has full HD and an LED backlight, but I actually enjoy this resolution because it's easier to read on a 12.1" screen. Reminds me of my old X20.

Design your own BMS, it is not that difficult in fact.
1 special IC, array of n-fets to turn off the shit when it is about to happen, one shunt, multiple numbers of resistors and transistors to balance. Just use the recommended schematic from datasheet.

Some ICs even have I2C or One-Wire to calculate power, capacity....

How hard is combining the display with the rest?
Or did you use a normal monitor and attached the panel and power board and interface board to the laptop and just connect it with VGA or how does one do this?

And yeah, cing-chong have good cases with touchpads and keyoards and LCDs for cheap, so you can use them.
Also you can try buying ThinkPad case and inserting yourshit into it.
Since you are using some low-end Raspberry Pi (I guess), you will be able to make 40+ hours if you will fill the case with 18650

got schemats plx?

Good point. I might also consider using an RC vehicle charger and just put a connector on the laptop to plug in the balance cable.

When I get the enclosure finished I'll sell some kits, probably just the enclosure, pointing stick submodule, and a preassembled display cable because they're near-impossible to find.

>CCFL
lmao. make sure that thing is tightly sealed or get low consumption LED. The mercury vapor is danger to children and moderately dangerous to you in the long run.

Of course you can get oem laptop cpus, just look harder.

user give us more details about the specs. What board youre using, cpu model, ram storage etc.

retard.

It will be in the trash before you get settled into a routine. Start browsing for a replacement.

Thanks. I might do that if I have a lot of trouble finding a controller. I have looked at the Texas Instruments datasheets.

What I would really like -- and might produce if I got a lot of orders -- is a daughterboard that contains the BMS, keyboard, pointer, status LEDs, volume & brightness controls, etc. Then I could just mount it on top of the motherboard and connect them with jumpers.

Right now I just have the display hooked up to the base with a 5" long VGA cable. I thought having a display that could be detached and used as a standalone monitor would be cool. But, in practice, the extra clunkiness is not worth it.

Screencapped

What's the bottom shit? An arcade joystick + buttons?

How'd you get the DIY clit mouse working?

>clit mouse

hmm, nice.

bump