I came up with the idea for this homemade laptop during the spring of 2020 when society was in lockdown due to COVID-19. I needed a project to keep myself busy and decided to make something funny to show off to my friends. However, the world’s shipping logistics were a mess, and I struggled to find the necessary parts to build it as I wanted. It took me two and a half years to complete this project, but I’m quite happy with the result.
I started by making drawings and planning the wiring inside the laptop, including how it would be powered. I knew early on that I wanted to use a Raspberry Pi as the main driver because of its compact size and because I already owned one.
One of the benefits of using a Raspberry Pi is that I can easily switch between different operating systems by just changing the SD card. Usually, I use it with Raspberry Pi OS because it’s the most suitable for a Raspberry Pi. Both the Raspberry Pi and the display are powered by a power bank, and when charging the laptop, the power bank is charged. One downside to using a power bank is that it can’t be charged and powered at the same time. To solve this, I mounted a two-way switch (the middle one). In the first position, the machine is powered by the power bank. In the second position, it’s powered by an external power source. It’s easy to switch between these power modes while the machine is running, although the machine still can’t be charged while in use. I find this solution to be good because most of the time I’m near a power source, and since I’m not using the machine all the time, it can charge while not in use. The switch which is the top one is the on-off switch for the Raspberry Pi. This is just a one-way switch. Anothet two-way switch (the bottom one) is wired to the screen, but the screen can only be powered by the battery. The other position of this switch provides power to the wireless keyboard. The screen can also be switched off while the computer is running to save energy. This is convenient if the computer is working on tasks like downloading or when it’s just on standby.
Since the Raspberry Pi within this laptop can’t run Spotify or most other common apps, I had to make my own music streaming app. That’s something I’ll cover in another post soon.
Here are a few photos of my homemade laptop:
