Homemade Tablet? An Idea.

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Ok, so here's my dilemma. I want a convertible tablet pc. Problem is though, I think all of the ones on the market are poop. They either run android (I don't see the point still) and iOS, or are clunky and rediculously expensive. But I had a extremley bright idea. Buy whatever laptop I like, slap a touchscreen on that bitch, and be happy. Keep in mind that as a poor college student with no job, I will probably never be able to afford this

1. Take apart laptop completley, Rip out the green bullcrap.

2. Mod case to be suitable as a convertible...or just look cool.

3. Rverse USB port to face inside

4. Close USB off from the outside

5. Get a USB Touchscreen conversion kit, which im sure come in many different flavors (Capacitive, Multitouch, Resistive), or better yet use a connector designed for computer internals, making #3 and #4 useless.

6. Add 3rd party accelerometer for Poitrait/Landscape orientation

7. Find a suitable hinge (or make one) and replace it

8. Boot laptop, install drivers for touchscreen and accelerometer

9. Pat myself on the back for custom making a tablet PC?

In my opinion the hardest part would be modding the case to be suitable as a convertible tablet, which can't be too hard. I have access to MIG/TIG welders, sheet metal cutters, grinders, ect. and I know people who know how to use them, so working with metal shouldn't be too dificult. In fact, I probably could just build a case myself from scratch. I also have alot of experience with plastic, so that's not a problem although I'd prefer to use metal for structural parts.

Touchscreen conversion kits seem to be all over the internet with a quick google search, and it shouldn't be too hard to find high quality capacitive touchscreen panels.

Walcom Bamboo Stylus because I'm a G

Accelerometers that work with windows I don't know about, but it cant be too hard Amirite? You can find ANYTHING for sale on the internet.

If I do do this however it will probably be in the summer (when I have a job). The only probelm I might have is the internals, seeing as I've never handled computer internals before. My brother did build his computer though, and I have a friend who also builds computers. It dosen't seem too hard compared to the other stuff like modding the case. While the laptop is dissasembled I'd probably put the parts in ziplock bags to keep them away from dirt and debris while I'm not using them. As long as I'm careful I don't thinkim going to mess anything up.

Good idea or no?

Good idea. Just keep in mind that the whole thing would be much heavier than a regular tablet, so holding it in hand would be difficult.
I have seen an EEE PC modded with a touchscreen, but the keyboard part was still there.

Just get a transformer lol...

What is wrong with Android? What is it you need to do that it won't?

My other idea would be to tell you most android devices are capable of running linux too?

Sounds like alot of work..and there are suitable models on the market, but if you wanna do it?

By the time you get around to it I wonder where technology will be...

PS ziplock bags? NO! Get some static bags..ziplocs are crazy static-charged! Honestly though, sounds like you are a good deal away from being able to deconstruct and reconstruct a laptop..the integrated circuits are ridiculously small and fragile..

PPS The hardest part might be actually getting the accelerometer sensors to function..which is where android comes in..you have to actually write some code into your operating system that will recognize and react accordingly withing the right parameters in your code..devs on this sight have problems with accelerometers that otherwise worked on a stock rom on OEM machines, god knows what it would take to get one working on a machine that never intended to have one by design?

That is all

What's old is new again

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It's funny we did something similar a few years ago to build PC's into cars and trucks. For that application and at that time it made sense. Today we essentially just make custom docks for COTS tablets so that they integrate with the car.

If you're opposed to Android and other mobile OS's my suggestion is to start looking around craigslist for convertible tablet/laptops like those from HP and Dell or look for a cheap HP slate. I've seen gently used Slates going for around $200-300 and they run windows 8 reasonably well. I've seen convertibles close to that price as well.

Unless you are just dead set on a fabrication project i'd strongly suggest taking advantage of off the shelf hardware and mass production pricing and spend your extra time and money learning how to get the most of of those components.

If you do go ahead with this then weight and cost will be your biggest issues. I think a better twist on this would be to figure out how to make a transformer type of dock for other popular tablets. If you can make them well and make them cheap then sell a few and buy what you really want.

The reason I don't like android is because It's not a desktop OS. I'll be building this tablet-y thing for graphics/image editing, word processing and a little bit of gaming in between and I'm not 100% sure about android graphics programs. I like to keep it simple and use MS Paint, then GIMP if i need a more powerful program. I'm also a windows fanboy and it's what I've been using ever since I was 2... I also like to build things.

I hate the transformer prime. I want a convertible tablet, not a tablet and a little dock thingy...won't serve my purposes.

I didn't know Ziplock bags are staticy by nature. Thanks for the tip.

As far as the accelerometer, I don't know much about them but if it's super difficult I'm probably not going to bother with it. I'll maybe install a switch?

It's hard to beat windows for functionality but you might check out paint.net as a free replacement for paint.


Over all though I get the idea that you're a little in over your head on this.

Sent from my HTC Flyer using XDA App

Originally Posted by LexusFman

I hate the transformer prime. I want a convertible tablet, not a tablet and a little dock thingy...won't serve my purposes.

Have you seen the Eee Pad Slider?

Also, Adobe photoshop for android = $10

https://market.android.com/details?i....pstouch&hl=en

Originally Posted by LexusFman

The reason I don't like android is because It's not a desktop OS. I'll be building this tablet-y thing for graphics/image editing, word processing and a little bit of gaming in between and I'm not 100% sure about android graphics programs. I like to keep it simple and use MS Paint, then GIMP if i need a more powerful program. I'm also a windows fanboy and it's what I've been using ever since I was 2... I also like to build things.

I hate the transformer prime. I want a convertible tablet, not a tablet and a little dock thingy...won't serve my purposes.

I didn't know Ziplock bags are staticy by nature. Thanks for the tip.

As far as the accelerometer, I don't know much about them but if it's super difficult I'm probably not going to bother with it. I'll maybe install a switch?

Dude, I've got photoshop, an office suite, and tons of games, I'd never have to touch a PC again..I am a graphic designer by trade! I can even watch hulu (something not supposed to be capable of on android platforms), I've got a nice stylus and a full qwerty keyboard and mouse- I'm working on the OG transformer not the Prime, as far as I can tell the Prime was pushed too quickly and has issues with all of it's radios due to the metal shell..the TF101 does not have these issues, and the TF700 (basically the prime with the GPS and radios fixed and better resoultion) is available if you don't want to go for the OG transformer.

Seriously sounds like you're trying feverishly to open a can of worms to get a windows tablet when in reality there is no need and windows is given a run for it's money with the new ICS android on the way. Trying to unlock a windows phone after unlocking a whole bunch of Android devices would quickly turn you off of Microsoft as an OS IMO, that's what made me an Android fanboy (I was a windows guy previously, now I'm leaning more and more towards linux/android for their open source code user-friendly programability). But, if you are determined to do something the hard way = the expensive and labor/time-consuming way, no one is going to stop you

Just remember- in the world of technology things are done: Right, Cheap, and/or Fast. BUT, you can only choose two..

I've done this already with a eeePC 700.

1. The resistive touchscreen. You'll need a stylus for that.
2. Typing with a stylus is horrible.
3. It was heavy. Even when it was only 7inch screen. The battery made it heavy. (but I had 9hours of battery life)
4. You couldn't navigate the boot menu (without an external keyboard)
5. Resistive touchscreen is crap for drawing, because you still want to support your hand on the screen while drawing, which you couldn't do.
6. Moving Items around sucked (no drag and drop)
and many more.

I used it in my bed, for browsing. was good enough, until the touchscreen cable snapped. (I didn't have an external keyboard, so I had to open the tablet, connect the keyboard, and navigate the boot menu when I had to)

Hope this helped. Though it was fun to build it and use it, it's not what you would call an 'every day' tablet

Originally Posted by romitkin

Good idea. Just keep in mind that the whole thing would be much heavier than a regular tablet, so holding it in hand would be difficult.
I have seen an EEE PC modded with a touchscreen, but the keyboard part was still there.

I don't think it would be much heavier, in fact I think the idea is perfect for modification of a netbook. It would probably be cheapest. since so much case modding is required and so many enclosure fabrication resources are handy, to put together a frankenstein out of 2 or 3 broken netbooks. Find someone who smashed the screen of one netbook, another one who fried the board of theirs, find a total-loss broken tablet PC (like dropped in lake michigan level of total loss so it will cost pennies) and get the ribbon cable and swivel element from there. I think if this idea is applied to a netbook it would be excellent in size and weight as well as functionality. And with the x86 version of android's progress, it could even be running android like a tablet in screen out mode, and change to webtop mode when its swiveled. Put a netbook mobile broadband card in there, many netbooks have open card expansions under the screw-out panels underneath, if not you would have to choose between wifi or taking the wifi expansion out in favor of a mobile broadband card, and certainly make sure that the card is supported by your wireless provider if you choose to go the mobile broadband route. With verizon or sprint you will most likely have to acquire a mobile broadband card out of a netbook that was originally sold by the company, but be sure to check and make sure the MEID is clean before paying anything for one, if the seller defaulted on a contract they used to acquire it, you might as well flash the thing to cricket or metroPCS and use them as your mobile broadband carrier. With either wifi or mobile broadband, as well as bluetooth, don't forget the antenna! yeah that thing you have to unhook from the other side of the card to take it out, you need that. (oh yeah, bluetooths are included as expansion cards sometimes too, if so you could always remove this to make room for the mobile broadband if you don't use bluetooth. I sure don't and probably wont until they drop the rediculous prices of non-audio bluetooth interfaces to acceptable and competative levels.)


That project actually sounds pretty freakin cool, the type of thing I'd do if I wasn't already swamped with projects. Definetly keep us posted if you decide to go through with it, as I pointed out, if you build it from netbook parts it should be well within your budget, netbooks run much cheaper then notebooks already, but a netbook is comperable in power to most current android devices and thus is suitable to handle most things you'd use a tablet PC for, just not high powered stuff like compiling code or rendering animation or playing 3d online games.

Edit: I'd like to add and point out that as a regular user of an acer netbook running ubuntu, it is wise to refrain from excessive multitasking, the atom had to sacrifice a bit of things we've become accustomed to in notebooks to meet the low power consumption and operating temperature requirements, and a lot of those things are things that mostly benefit multitasking. You will not be happy if you try and run a jillion programs at the same time.
That being said ubuntu's new primary UI, I forget what it's called evolve or something like that, it is an excellent UI for netbooks, perfectly space-optimized, especially in the vertical range which gets filled quick on lil netbook screens. I'm not sold on it and prefer to go with gnome or xfce on desktops and normal-sized notebooks, but it is top-notch on a netbook. I'd also recommend not messing with the accelerometer at first and including it later as it may be a pain to implement correctly in comparison to the limited amount of functionality it brings to the table. I'd rather have something that works personally that I can make additions to then pull my hair out trying to throw everything in the first time right.

---------- Post added at 10:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:47 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Will_nonya

It's hard to beat windows for functionality but you might check out paint.net as a free replacement for paint.


Over all though I get the idea that you're a little in over your head on this.

Sent from my HTC Flyer using XDA App

Have to LMAO @ this comment. If users would ever actually push developers to release for the linux platform, especially hardware manufacturers (which is ridiculous since all they would have to do is release their code open source, or even just parts of their code and the community would do the rest. Doesn't matter much tho, it's mostly crappy chinese hardware that isn't supported by linux, and their HQs more then likely don't speak enough english to be able to request anything, beleive me I've tried to contact MSI before.... most hardware worth running is fully supported tho)

But point is, I feel like it is extremely cumbersome whenever I'm forced to use windows, apart from trying to use unsupported hardware or cross-platform software (although wine and mono have made GIGANTIC leaps in usability). I pretty much never have to deal with drivers, updates to all software happens automatically, it's become so self-maintaining that I'm ashamed of how lazy of a linux user I've become. When I actually do have to do something even remotely advanced I have to think for a minute about it. Usually the only thing that really requires a lot of getting under the hood that I ever have to do is when I set up my audio-production setups which is even a lot easier now that they have dedicated repositories for them, and when set up correctly the real time preemptable kernel will run circles around any windows or OSX setup latency-wise. I was pulling lower latency with computers recording with ardour, and sequencing/synthesizing/sampling with seq24 amSynth, and qsampler, 5 years older then any PC I would test it against running windows with Reason and Protools. the Jack audio drivers that allowed software to plug audio inbetween applications directly across the PCM was just icing on the cake.

Windows is good software, but linux has certainly surpassed it by leaps and bounds. Windows still rules for gaming because of directX and industry unwillingness to port to linux, but the period of time right after Microsoft declared it was removing directX support from XP on further releases saw linux catch up with windows for a little while as they rushed wine to support the newest directX making it actually possible to actually run new releases under windowsXP even. Curses microsoft, foiled again! And off topic, but furthermore, I can't believe people still pay so much money for that god damn talking paper clip, openoffice.org ftw!

As I said windows isn't bad software, I said before in these forums actually that if windows ran a microsoft controlled repository to distribute all software for windows through, like linux, it would have similarly non-existant problems with viruses. Having people go around the wild-west of the internet downloading and installing programs from there without even thinking about it is just asking for the malware and adware problems windows experiences. Windows is good software, linux is just much better software.