User:Alejandro Mery/Lapdock

Design and manufacture an Open Source Mobility Accessory for HDMI sticks and development boards providing an inexpensive 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) and the actual Lapdock, sharing the same PCB.

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

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)

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?)
 * dream: option of using a compatible higher resolution panel
 * stereo speakers
 * how to deal 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
 * 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

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
 * DisplayPort is better than HDMI