Single board computer laptop thread.

>Thinkpads have gone too expensive. >Raspberry pi has no supply. >Europe is experiencing high electricity bills. >Mac M1/M2 are expensive and aren't customizable. Anyone has any experience/3D models or so regarding custom made laptop cases for single board computers? I have been thinking about a custom laptop for a while now. It seems cool: >No webcams >Keyboard you like >Power efficiency >Pretty cheap I have looked at some bigger companies selling kits and some people making it from scratch, but it is always powerbang depended or not customizable enough. Has Lain ever thought about going a step further than custom PCs? >Pic 1: Star64, Risc-V based single board computer at around 90$ (Not released yet) >Pic 2: Orange Pi 5, ARM Raspberry clone that is available

>powerbang dependent Assuming you mean powerbank dependent, this is going to be the big issue you run into. Laptops either do battery monitoring and control over the SMB, or a similar bus based on it. If your board doesn't have an smb to adapt to, and you're using the general I/O pins for other soykaf, you're going to need to offload that functionality elsewhere. Also, assuming you want to be able to run off both battery and wall power, you're going to need to figure out how to balance charging and running the computer itself, detecting when power is unplugged, feeding both in etc etc; which I (at least) cannot figure out how to do without creating a custom circuit for it. I wish you the best of luck lain. I'm working on a similar project with a thin mini-itx board, but progress is slow because so much of it is outside my wheelhouse.

>>66619 not OP, but this is what i have in mind

>>66624 >20$ I can probably live with having to switch out powerbanks then.... I could just have 2 plugs going into power.... just have to really be careful not to plug in both at the same time. Also the Star64 will take 9V or 12V (Not sure and lazy to look up right now) so I also have to find something that can give that power or run a voltage regulator. >>66619 >Assuming you mean powerbank I think auto-correct screwed me over :D Also I have been thinking about it more.... honestly I don't mind a bigger boy as long as the heat and keyboard are good... I just like it real light-weight which the 3D print would surely do.... I will literally just make the cheapest thing that is available just to proof the point of how you don't need the newest stuff and yet run everything and power-efficient at that. I think I will use the pi keyboard or some real generic bluetooth logitech keyboard with an integrated touch pad. I have to get like male to female connectors to extend all the stuff that isn't accessible and the last thing I need is a screen. Any recommendations on serial connected screens? I Think with everything included accept shipping I could literally build a RISC-V laptop with like 150-200$.

I found this one that uses a Raspberry Pi, but that can probably be replaced with a board of similair dimensions. https://cyberdeck.cafe/mix/griz

>>66626 No recommendation on the screens (unfortunately), but if you end up with a spare usb port/pins picrel is a nice size for laptops.

>>66680 Never heard of them, but looks good. I am thinking about just skipping any mouse input overall and just using vim bindings, but I keep that in mind.... sadly there aren't any cheap thinkpad like once with just the nipple. I do have a broken T40 laying around... I could use that one, but I do not have the energy to reverse engineer the keyboard pinout and make the OS understand the inputs.

Why not just get a Pinebook Pro if this is going to be your main machine? Good screen, decently powerful, decent battery life, NVME, relatively large community so good software support

Step one: find an SBC other than Raspberry Pi which won't turn into a pumpkin one year after release.

VisionFive 2 in a picoITX form factor seems really cool. IMHO it might pay to wait a couple months or for the VisionFive 3, but who knows. Pis suck at this point, unless they decide to include a cryptographic accelerator on the next one so FDE isn't a PITA. >>66685 4GB of ram isn't great

>>66685 Or get a pinephone with the keyboard and convergence pack. Much more portable. I had the pinebook pro and it sucked. Pinephone convergence has ethernet and hdmi. Cant beat that.

>>66685 I am actually thinking about maybe skipping pine entirely even if I am a fan of RISC-V. The shipping is insane to EU. You pay like 400€ for the pinebook what costs 200$ for US people plus like 10$ shipping and like a bit of tax. There is a reason why most people are on amazon. Their service is monopolistic, but it is really cheap. I also don't really wanna consoom, but I do kinda need a better laptop that is atleast ARM in some way, because of power consumption. Sadly there aren't any regional highly available computers like in the 80s. But yes you are right about the overall package of the Pinebook Pro being really good and they even plan to make a all in one RISC-V laptop. >>66703 Yes and I also really want my print and design to be highly repairable and interchangeable and well Pi's prices are insane. >>66709 I am writing this from a Laptop having 2GB of RAM. And I don't even max it out. My CPU bottlenecks before that :D If you stay away from java-script heavy pages you should be fine, but I wouldn't compile anything on this... trust me I tried. >>66710 Same problem with the shipping, also phones aren't that interchangeable and my concern isn't space. I rather have a real good keyboard with a larger screen. Update for now. No idea. I am not even sure if I truly want to get into the RISC-V ecosystem. It does have it's benefits tough. ARM isn't that bad either. I am not aware of something like intel ME being in ARM or at least the ARM chips used in SOCs. I might honestly just get a Pi clone from amazon with low shipping cost and like 4GB of RAM and I am probably gonna use powerbanks. I do not really use my tech while being outside, but having something I can use in bed (like right now) would be pretty comfy. Maybe I could just build like a little Laptop shell with a HDMI and USB going into my pc with like a long cable. I do have plenty of ideas just no 3D design skills... speaking about that. Can anyone recommend me guides or FOSS software to start with like 3D printing and such. I have a friend who has a printer. Is all the software stuff standardized?

>>66731 Have you tried getting a job?

Do you really need a laptop formfactor? Couldnt you just use a SBC hooked up to a power supply, a collapsible keyboard and a small monitor or projector?

>>66749 >Have you tried getting a job? Good point. >>66752 >Do you really need a laptop formfactor? Clever idea. It would eliminate the 3D design and heat and form factor complains I would just need a case for the SOC. I mean I would need more cables, but that's like 3 more things to carry so not too bad. And it is inter-changable, thanks Lain.