I made a Raspberry PI Laptop

My lapdock arrived on Friday ($60 shipped from ebay), so I figured I would dig into it today while I wait for my raspi to show up.

My plan is to not use the flip-out tray, and instead run short cables for usb power, usb data, hdmi, and headphone jack all out through the left side of the case in the area vacated by the left speaker. I'll either have the raspi sit on the desk next to the lapdock or stick it with velcro to the back of the display.

I clipped the usb head out of the lapdock and did my usb cable connections there. I probably wouldn't do it this way again though, those wires are REALLY small and difficult to separate.

Using a usb micro to usb converter and sacrificed cable I came up with this color cross reference for the data lines. I have not verified that it actually works yet but it appears that lapdock red should be tied to usb cable green and lapdock brown should be tied to usb cable white.

I need to pick up a smaller 3.5mm barrel jack for the audio, the one I used is from an old sound card and is a little too big to fit inside the lapdock case. The lapdock speakers are 8ohm 0.5W. I did test my barrel jack with headphones and it works. HDMI source was an xbox 360 (running through the lapdock of course). From the speaker connector I used:

Red: Right channel
Black: common for right channel
Blue: Left channel
white: common for left channel.

White and black are tied together as there is only one common conductor on the barrel jack.

I'm still waiting on a micro hdmi extension cable from ebay/china. After my difficulties with the usb wires on the lapdock side there's no way I'm going to try to tackle re-doing the wiring at the lapdock hdmi connector.

pictures:

I thought I read someone got sound via hdmi working? (on phone now, will look later) Did you have other plans for hacking up the audio stuff?

I believe someone had raspi sound over hdmi working. Since I don't have mine yet I've been using an Xbox to test out the lapdock sound and video over hdmi. Since the lapdock doesn't have a headphone jack I am using the speaker outputs and running them to a headphone jack.

Was thinking of using this usb cable for power/data. Just cut off one end for data! Anyone tried this cable before?

Nice! I might just order one once I know it works. The only potential glitch could be if the cable conductors are on the skimpy side, since we now know that the Pi can draw upwards of 1,000 ma of current, even more depending on what's plugged into the USB ports. Higher current results in a larger voltage drop across the cable, and the Pi is touchy enough about low voltage as it is. At least the cables aren't very long, as that also contributes to voltage drop.

When you say cut off one end for data, what are you going to connect the cut end to, a full-sized type A male USB plug? Any idea what the icon with the X through it on the female end of the cord means?

The X on the Female end just means 'do not throw away in trash'. Most consumer electronics have it or their batteries do.

Also, yes I plan on getting a full sized type A male usb plug. That way i can plug it in for keyboard/mouse(touch pad)/hub. Im planning on making the plug as small as possible so that that its pretty much flat while sticking out of the pi. The cable is rated for at last 750mah which will be just fine since the keyboard and mouse are powered by battery. I am also only going to connect the 2 data cables and ground to the Male A plug, that way no power is being drained from/fed-back to the usb port.
Ive also ordered this (http://www.ebay.com/itm/280853583226?ss ... 721wt_1144) so that i can remove the shielding and pull out the data cables and possibly ground to wire to a usb A male plug, while i wait for that y cable to come.

Since the lapdock doesn't have a headphone jack...

Woah really? I hadn't even caught that. Seems a really odd thing to leave out... I guess people would just use the one on their phone directly. Fortunately if you don't bury your Pi inside, we can still get to ours too.

Fortunately if you don't bury your Pi inside, we can still get to our [headphone jack] too.

It's pretty obvious that those of us with lapdocks have been too busy to put our Pi boards in a case, and the existing Pi case designs will cause the entire Pi plus case to hang over the back of the rotating pop-up Atrix cradle, supported solely by the lapdock microHDMI male connector if a microHDMI-to-full-size-HDMI adaptor is used to connect the Pi to the lapdock (which is what I'm using, at the moment to avoid having to hack the inside of the lapdock). So, it looks like we need to design a special case that extends down into the Atrix cradle to relieve the stress on that tiny microHDMI connector on the cradle. Since the cradle is rounded along the back/bottom corner, the case will need to accommodate that, although it appears that a case could surround the cradle around the back and use friction-fitting to hold it in the cradle.

That rounded corner would be a very complex shape to incorporate, although a 3-D printer could theoretically produce a high-strength poly case that would fit precisely in/around the cradle's interior and exterior. It would take many hours of trial-and-error to get the fit just right, and it wouldn't be worth the effort to produce a mold for volume injection molding as there are so few lapdockers among us. This would definitely be a hobbyist/maker effort that couldn't cover the cost of labor, and the cost of the ABS material (strongest and easiest to extrude, although requires higher temperature). I'll see if I can whip up a 3-D rendering of what the case could look like, along with the under-lapdock case I'm building.

Just got the female micro-HDMI adapters I needed today so plugged my Lapdock in. I only used two cable - one for USB and the other for HDMI. Since I had done the Pi-Pass modification on my Pi I did not need to do any surgery on the USB cable for power purposes to get it to work!

Everything worked without me having to do anything - screen, keyboard, mouse, audio so I was very impressed. The only thing I had to remember when playing with OpenElec was to make sure the sound was configured for HDMI as I had previously had it set to Analog.

It's pretty obvious that those of us with lapdocks have been too busy to put our Pi boards in a case, and the existing Pi case designs will cause the entire Pi plus case to hang over the back of the rotating pop-up Atrix cradle, supported solely by the lapdock microHDMI male connector if a microHDMI-to-full-size-HDMI adaptor is used to connect the Pi to the lapdock (which is what I'm using, at the moment to avoid having to hack the inside of the lapdock). So, it looks like we need to design a special case that extends down into the Atrix cradle to relieve the stress on that tiny microHDMI connector on the cradle...

The extra stress on those little connectors is what swayed my decision to run short cable leads outside of the case. It may not be as clean looking but it should do the trick. I like the idea of a custom cradle. There isn't a lot of extra length in the lapdock usb and hdmi leads to work with unfortunately.

I fooled around with some cut-and-folded paper ideas and I realized that I don't need to worry about the curve in the cradle, as the case has to extend behind the cradle. The microHDMI adapter is snug up against the inside surface of the cradle, so, there's no gap for any thickness of material to fit. That's OK, as the case could fit around the outer surface of the cradle as well as rest on the bottom of the curved part, to the left of the microUSB connector.

A quick prototype could be fabricated using the cut-and-folded transparent Mylar sheet technique, although it might need to be doubled-up (using multiple concentric folds?) in order to ensure enough strength at the points of greatest stress. The Mylar could be made to fit into the rounded corner of cradle bottom pretty easily, its transparency would allow showing off the details of the board, and the Pi logo and other nomenclature could be printed on the inside of case. Once a design is completed, the fold and cut lines could be drawn in a graphics program making the design easily available to anyone to print out on Mylar themselves. The inspiration for the Mylar case comes from tzj's design, and others have since been developed:

http://elinux.org/RPi_Cases#Printable_M ... ld-up_Case

R-Pi_Mylar_Print-n-Fold_Case.GIF (16.15 KiB) Viewed 3717 times

Awaiting cables here too, but in the mean time I've set about modding the lapdock. Drawing inspiration from godFather89's effort, but not posessing the same levels of surgical skills or inclination to hack the Pi, I propose to mount the Pi like this:

docked.jpg (32.04 KiB) Viewed 3595 times

The Pi's a neat fit this way round. I've cut a slot for the SDCard to poke through, trimming away internally too. Luckily the card just misses the metal post that forms the hinge. I'm bringing the USB port's D+, D1 & GND lines to a small socket so that I can make use of the dock's hub:

modified.jpg (25.84 KiB) Viewed 3595 times

A bonus to hacking it this way is that on replacing adapter plate, all the butchery is hidden & the Lapdock can still be used with the phone if desired. And no mods to the precious Pi!

Has anyone had any luck with wireless adapters yet. I saw the earliest post but that is not working for mine. I have Network-manager-gnome in wheezy and it was working on my RasPi without the Lapdock. It will not even detect it with the Lapdock. It causes a hang at sshd during boot. Ant ideas?

Same here. Until I removed the onboard hub and everything just works.
Let the Pi boot, than add the USB dongle and check dmesg. It will give you lots and lots of errors.

Until I removed the onboard hub

Could you elaborate on what you did here?

There is a chip near the USB connector that gets really hot. That chip is an USB hub + USB ethernet controller. I just desoldered it (+some connectors) and shorted out R36 and R37. This will give you one single USB and no ethernet.
For me, this works just fine (I have a TP-Link 723N wireless dongle).

Is there a way to short around the LAN9512 without removing the chip? It looks like the A models will be the best for use with the Lapdocks.

What is the cause of the WiFi problems? A fight between the RasPi hub and the Lapdock hub?

When I tried a powered hub off of the RasPi, while it was plugged into the Lapdock, I still had the same problem. When used this way without the Lapdock it works just fine.

Any idea what amperage the Lapdock USB ports supply?
The two things I would like run off of it are a USB HDD and a Wireless dongle. Only two ports and the USB HDD is a "Y" cable.

Another option I have been looking at is this nano router.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-NA-_-NA
It plugs into the ethernet connector and you could power it from the Lapdock USB port. It would give you wireless access through a bridged mode. Should get around the problem with the Lapdock and RasPi hubs.

I've only just discovered that wifi issue with my Lapdock, after about a week of attempting to reinstall/recompile the wifi drivers

In the end I found that if I unplug the Lapdock's USB connection, the dongle's light suddenly turns on, and I have wifi!

If I then plug the Lapdock back into the Pi, the wifi continues to work, and you can type again.
Not ideal, but it works for me

It doesn't appear to be a power thing - if the wifi-dongle is plugged into the Pi via a separate powered hub, it still doesn't work properly if the Lapdock was plugged in first.
Disconnect the Lapdock, and the wifi then activates.

My wifi dongle doesn't work when plugged into the Lapdock's hub-sockets, but that's not surprising .

I don't know enough about Linux or the Lapdock to find a better solution, but hopefully this info will be of use to someone cleverer than me!

I got my own Atrix Lapdock-based RaspTop working last week:


I didn't want to modify the dock or Raspi, and I wanted to minimise the amount of cabling, so I've encased my shoddy soldering in a small Maplin project-box:


(the Raspi is in a case I made from the box it came in)

That wifi dongle is a Micronet SP907NS - I've found that it only starts working when the Lapdock's data-cable is disconnected - once the wifi is activated, it doesn't mind if you plug in the Lapdock after.
Can anyone think of a possible software-fix for that?

Here's the messy hidden bottom of the box, where it plugs into the Lapdock:


I made all the holes in the box with a soldering-iron (plus craft-knife for tidying) and filled holes/fixed components with a glue-gun.

I've added a power-switch to the bottom of the adapter-box, to get around the fact that the Lapdock will always put out power to the dock-port.

Here's the top of the box, where the Raspi sits:


You might notice the filled-in hole where I originally put the power-switch, forgetting that the Raspi will cover that up if it's in a case...

The HDMI uses this adapter, with the outer plastic removed:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0086VDWSW
I couldn't change the length of that, so that was the size I had to work to.

The USB parts of the adapter were built from a cheap micro-usb cable, and this adapter:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008ADIRUY
After cutting away the outer casing, I found that the socket/plug were connected by actual wires, so it was easy to desolder the plug and attach it to my new y-cable.
The wires inside the adapter were all red though, so I had to work out which were which by trial-and-error

(I originally bought a pack of micro-usb socket components, but gave up on using one of those - I'm not quite up to soldering wires to surface-mount components )

The y-cable leg that plugs into the Raspi's USB-sockets only contains white/green data-wires.
This works fine for me, but other people appear to be be including the black ground-wire too... should I be doing that too?
(I'm guessing this works fine because the Pi is already grounded to the Lapdock via the power-socket)

That's a pretty nice setup (clean as far as cable mangement goes).

That USB-A-2-MicroUSB-B is kinda a pain to find. The one you posted is not available in the US amazon store.

For folks in the US, I ended up ordering this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Type-A-Mi ... to+micro-b

But before seeing these options:

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SY-ADA20084- ... to+micro-b

http://www.amazon.com/Bargain-Cable-Sup ... to+micro-b

I'm curious why these are only findable in the USB3 spec variety (except yours). I might have to order from the UK store if mine doesn't work out or is too clunky feeling. Still waiting on my RMA'd lapdock. Expected Today!

That's a pretty nice setup (clean as far as cable mangement goes).

That USB-A-2-MicroUSB-B is kinda a pain to find. The one you posted is not available in the US amazon store.

For folks in the US, I ended up ordering this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Type-A-Mi ... to+micro-b

But before seeing these options:

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SY-ADA20084- ... to+micro-b

http://www.amazon.com/Bargain-Cable-Sup ... to+micro-b

I'm curious why these are only findable in the USB3 spec variety (except yours). I might have to order from the UK store if mine doesn't work out or is too clunky feeling. Still waiting on my RMA'd lapdock. Expected Today!

Try different search-terms - searching for Micro Usb Female comes up with a bunch of possible adapters:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_ex_n_0?r ... usb+female

This one looks like it might do the job?
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Micr ... 002O1S8IE/

This one is more expensive, but definately has wires that can be broken into:
http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-micro-Fe ... 004BBJNHK/

I specifically went for the cheapest-looking adapter with a female micro-usb socket that I could find - I guessed that a lower-end product would probably be easier to dismantle, and would be more likely to have actual wires I could solder

The other end of the adapter doesn't really matter if you're planning on snipping it off anyway.

I was working on a solderless and low-mod approach. I specifically needed the full size male to micro female... and those are rare, even in the search results you posted.

I was working on a solderless and low-mod approach. I specifically needed the full size male to micro female... and those are rare, even in the search results you posted.

Yeah, you're limited to what's provided for common uses, so you're probably going to have to use a combination of adapters.

There's a couple of micro-to-mini adapters, and there's a lot more choice in the mini-usb selection, so I'd recommend pursuing those.

You'll need some kind of gender-changer/joiner, and it looks like you can only really get them for full-sized usb:
www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=s ... er+changer

So, i just got my lap-dock today : )

I should have ordered the connector at the same time, oh well I'll just have to wait.
I'm surprised at how stylish it is.

Any ideas for a name for this thing?

- a Pi-top
- Radox
-Rasp-dock

So, i just got my lap-dock today : )

I should have ordered the connector at the same time, oh well I'll just have to wait.
I'm surprised at how stylish it is.

Any ideas for a name for this thing?

- a Pi-top
- Radox
-Rasp-dock

I've been calling mine a RaspTop

I'd call it a PiPad, but it's not a tablet...

I've been calling mine a RaspTop

I'd call it a PiPad, but it's not a tablet...

If someone would manage to now fit the raspberry inside this it would be the ideal casing, just leave an HDMI connector on the outside and you have a RaspTop+Rasberry itself in one!

I've been calling mine a RaspTop

I'd call it a PiPad, but it's not a tablet...

If someone would manage to now fit the raspberry inside this it would be the ideal casing, just leave an HDMI connector on the outside and you have a RaspTop+Rasberry itself in one!

I don't think that's going to be possible without making the case bigger - the Lapdock is very thin, so there's not really any room for inserting a Pi, even if you were to remove the batteries