User:Alejandro Mery/Lapdock

Design and manufacture an Open Source Mobility Accessory for HDMI sticks and development boards providing an inexpensive quality dumb "shell" with display, audio, input, usb and battery.

Rationale
Motorola's lapdock was a great idea, but it was conceived as a device-specific accessory, sold for around $250 and soon phased out. now this hard to find "accessory" is used to turn hdmi sticks and dev boards like the raspberry-pi and cubieboard into a "laptop". beside availability the major problem is the micro-male connectors which aren't only fragile but complicate to connect using inexpensive standard cables and your device ends up levitating over a tangle of cables and adapters. An as it assumes a phone is connected it kills the power of your toy when closing the lid.

ARM devices get faster, smaller and sexier by the day, and also cheaper and cheaper, and this reflects directly in sexy develoment boards and good dirt-cheap hdmi dongles, a market that is now so mainstream that even DELL announced one.

There is need (niche market, geeks) of a better solution, a lapdock with full size female hdmi and usb connector, good construction and good screen. Sourcing components of existing good laptops.

It has been proposed to design two flavours, a Tabdock (dumb large tablet, no keyboard/touchpad, no sata) and the actual Lapdock, sharing the same PCB.

Name
The Lapdock word is trademarked, so need a new name:
 * geekdock?
 * lapstick?
 * stickbook?
 * stickdock?

Target connectable devices
Because of the assorted sizes and connector location the stick can't be inside the case, so the interface will be external. The least common denominator is HDMI video + audio, USB-Host 2.0 and 5V power.


 * A tv dongle (aka hdmi stick) usually has a male full-size HDMI connector and a couple of USB ports, one of which (OTG) can be used to power the device up to 0.5A, and optionally a dedicated 5V DC connector.
 * A (development) board usually has a female full-size HDMI connector, a dedicated 5V DC connector, a bunch of USB ports, and one usb device port (or OTG) that can sometimes also power the device up to 0.5A.

Even if it's not very common yet dongles and boards can include a SATA/eSATA port, but there are also inexpensive USB/eSATA adapters that can be plugged on one of the spare USB ports in the device, to not compete for USB bandwidth with the lapdock.

Target enclosures
what should the case look like on outside?


 * tablet: smallish (11"?), light, portable, touch-enabled. Possibly would go well with stick platform
 * issues
 * case thickness - portable cases should have small, well defined thickness but even sticks tend to be of variable non-trivial thickness.
 * case design - opening for connecting the stick is needed. Not many tablet cases will have any user-accessible opening at all
 * internal accessories
 * basic
 * USB hub - provides external USB ports and connections for internal ports
 * HDMI- LVDS converter - connects internal display
 * display + USB touchscreen
 * batteries + battery charger - need 5V power for stick + unknown for display
 * position sensor - provides input for display rotation - probably need USB HID solution given lack of inputs on sticks
 * extra
 * HDMI splitter
 * HDMI- VGA+sound converter - provides sound for sticks that don't have audio connector, external VGA output
 * external HDMI output
 * USB sound - another way to get audio on boards w/o analog output
 * USB ethernet
 * USB WiFi with antenna
 * SDIO extension cable - ability to mount system SD card in an external connector
 * external accessories
 * some sort of sleeve/stand with wireless or USB keyboard


 * laptop - medium (13") light but full size keyborad and screen - possibly can target sticks or boards
 * good target enclosure - some brand name like IBM/Lenovo notebook case
 * widely available
 * easy to describe to potential users
 * good availability of various localized keyboard layouts, etc.
 * issues
 * case thickness - may need quite large case to contain even small subset of boards/sticks
 * accessories
 * basic
 * USB hub/extension for external ports
 * USB ethernet/ethernet extension
 * LVDS display
 * internal keyboard
 * internal touchpad/other input device
 * batteries + charger
 * audio - either simple analog extension or breakout from HDMI or USB
 * SATA - direct SATA or USB-SATA convertor, 2.5" drive bay
 * extra
 * HDMI splitter
 * HDMI - LVDS converter for non-LVDS boards
 * HDMI - eDP or LVDS - eDP converter to use eDP display in place of LVDS - converters seem hard to find
 * VGA and/or HDMI external output either through splitter or using extra board outputs
 * easy access to unused board headers
 * option to replace the SATA drive aby with eSATA connector

Inputs
The idea is to stick the dongle directly, and then connect a USB cable. Development boards or dongles with female hdmi connector will require an HDMI cable as well. The point is make it easy to use by not requiring anything fancy.


 * Full size female HDMI connector (where to connect a normal HDMI stick directly) and optionally a DisplayPort connector
 * Full size female Type A USB 2.0 slave connector capable of feeding the device with power when used connected to an OTG port (even with the lid closed), leading to a USB hub.
 * Standard 12V/2A 5.5/2.5mm DC connector. (Ideally been able to take more than 2A if needed)
 * diskless devices might be perhaps powered from 5V/USB with display dimmed?

It would also be interesting to add eSATA, to connect an internal 2.5" SATA drive powered by the lapdock.

Video/Audio
From HDMI/DisplayPort input to an HDMI/eDP controller, and then:
 * 11-13" screen of at least 1080p (1920x1080) resolution
 * usable outdoor (matte?)
 * aim for the best ;-)
 * dream: option of using a compatible higher resolution panel
 * panels come with edid ;-)
 * stereo speakers
 * how to de with amp/volume control?
 * 3.5" headphone

USB
From the USB device port to a self-powered 7x USB 2.0 hub, then connected to:
 * 1) usb camera with mic
 * 2) * mainline linux support
 * 3) * mic also available in the 3.5" connector?
 * 4) full SD card reader
 * 5) Type A Host port capable of feeding >1A (2.1 possible?) even with the lid closed.
 * 6) Type A Host port.
 * 7) tbd ... standard usb/mini-pci-e socket ? --—amery (?) 09:51, 5 March 2013 (CET)
 * 8) tbd
 * 9) USB 1.1 hub
 * 10) Near full-size quality (not bending!) keyboard
 * 11) * dream: option to source different layouts
 * 12) touchpad with mainline linux support
 * 13) * dream: two finger, middle button
 * 14) capacitive touch screen
 * 15) * resistive option?
 * 16) * tablets and phones have TS troubles when used plugged, need to avoid that here.
 * 17) tbd ... EC ? --—amery (?) 09:51, 5 March 2013 (CET)

Note: the USB device port needs to be fed too.

Power

 * battery capable of feeding the attached device and screen for at least 6h (is 10h too much asking?)
 * power the usb hub, the usb input port, and give ≥ 1A on at least one of the host ports.
 * battery indicator
 * avoid "interference" with TS
 * feed 2.5" SATA drive (SSD for the sake of power saving)

Hacking

 * easy to open up
 * pins to reprogram the EC
 * dream: EC reachable over USB
 * dream: STM32F based EC
 * schematics
 * OSHW?

PCB
Some options for the needed ICs are:


 * HDMI/LCD controller:
 * RTD2482D HDMI/LVDS controller
 * ANX7808 HDMI/eDP controller
 * SlimPort/USB support means we can use it as a USB display like DisplayLink? --—amery (?) 10:42, 21 February 2013 (CET)
 * USB 2.0 7x self-powered hub:
 * SMSC USB2517
 * USB Charger
 * SMSC UCS1001
 * PMIC (12V to 3.3V + LiPo charger)
 * tbd

Screens

 * 11.6" 1920x1080 panel
 * CHIMEI INNOLUX N116HSE-EA1
 * 13.3" 1920x1080 panel
 * CHIMEI INNOLUX N133HSE-EA1
 * 10" 1280x800 panel no eDP panel that can be driven from HDMI found yet.

Battery
for 10W * 6h @ 3.3V:
 * 2 * 3.7V/9000mAh

Random Notes

 * eDP is better than LVDS/FPD-Link
 * DisplayPort is better than HDMI