Custom Laptop

I worked on basic routing for the ethernet. I am deciding to get back into this, I’ve been busy with school but I will lock in. I’ve done a decent bit so far

I had to reroute most of the ethernet port due to bad placement. I might have to replace most of this board to make everything optimal and make it fit.

Today I learned about differential pairs and got most of the Ethernet pairs routed except one differential pair that has a crossover. Routing is difficult sometimes, but other times its not. I feel I just need to spend more time and I should be done. I don’t have much time as I have to study a lot for the classes I’m in.

I spent today learning about USB3.0 I learned about differential pairs and that they can easily be done within kicad.

I did some research today and I learned that there was a lattepanda mu discord, I can use this to get my PCB sanity checked. I want to finish this laptop soon as school has started and I need a laptop for school and I know I probably won’t have much time coming up. I think next I will work on the USBA 3.1 next and go do that next.

I finalized the USB-C routing and everything is working correctly. I now have a finalized workflow to work with.

I spent a lot of time researching, I know I only clocked 30 minutes, but that doesn’t really include the time I spent researching on my phone while I was away. I learned that I could just use the net classess in the design rule and I could route and it will automatically bring up the best settings for that track, so I set that up and now I should be ready to just finish up the routing. I just need to be careful and make sure I check the docs to see the routing standards.

Today, I didn’t really get much work. I’ve hit a roadblock on routing the PCB I don’t really understand how to make sure everything is up to the standards. I may take a break due to school starting and figuring out how to get back into this. But I will finish this project!

P.S. this project will probably not be finished within stardance but Ill try my best

I worked on routing the USB-c’s, does anyone know if auto routers are allowed?

Today, I had to reroute the USB-C power from yesterday as it prevented me from routing other componenets. I had to delete all of the traces and start over again. I learned that the USB-C power had to be routed on the front, which prevented me from using vias, only making my life harder. I decided to restart rather than only deleting some traces as it would be easier to know whats going on if I just restarted and moved the componets to the most efficient spots.

Today I continued my work on track widths, I looked back on the pcb made by the LattePanda team, which assisted me on how I should do it. I successfully(I think?) routed the tracks for the USB-C power I’m using. Nothing broke thankfully other than the fact that I had to replace some resistors. I learned that if a route is only carrying power like a screw terminal then it should be thicker usually, this doesn’t really apply to me too much because I modified the board to use USB-C for it’s only power source. I chose to use USB-C power over a screw terminal as it would be easier to find battery options that were more efficient and were made by reliable companies, which means it would be less likely to blow up, which is always good :). It surprised me that the USB-C track width could be almost the same as the standard size.

I researched the tracks for the carrier board, man this is so confusing. I don’t understand how I would fit a 2.5mm thick trace, so im probably missing something.

today I planned to route, but I realized this was way different from the macropad and keyboards I designed in the past this meant I had to learn how thick to make the traces and etc. The routing will take me much longer than expected I plan to finish routing this week however.

Today I finished the layer stackup I aam good to start routing now.

Today I worked on the layer stackup. This was a step I would’ve over looked if I didn’t go back to Ben’s Make’s Everything’s Video.

I went through all of the errors, Im going to work on the routing tomorrow.

I finished placing all of the components it took me a while as I do want
it to run efficiently, everything is coming together guys!

PS

I took a break as I had to go out of town, so yeah.

Everythings coming together, I just need to make sure if all the holes are in their right spot and if the smaller things like caps. and rests. placement matter, as they usually don’t but it doesn’t hurt to check.

My lookout was kind of bugging but today I layed out the medium ish componets in sections of what they do, so this is how my pcb is so far.

so today I layed out the major componets for my second try on my pcb it didnt take me as long as I knew what to do already.

I decided to restart the PCB because Id rather do it right then at all.

did a little bit of work on the github, I also learned I dont really need the GPIO so i might have to restart.

spent today working on laying out componets the m.2 is fine now I even added silk screen, I just need to layout the smaller stuff now.

I did a little bit of work trying to figure out on how everything will fit.

Hey so today, I worked on the m.2 slots a bit couldnt really figure it out.

I started laying out the PCB, everything seems to be coming together now. The M.2 slots are giving me trouble as I don’t know how to distance the hole from the slot perfectly.

I started the PCB today after researching some batteries. I could not find any thinner options, so I will have to go with the option I chose earlier. As you can see in the image the 135mmx135mm pcb size will be difficult to fit the PCB in, but anything good was never easy.

I worked on the chassis a bit to figure out how big I can make my PCB, which will be 135mmx135mm. One problem I have right now is hoow to continure this hardware project as I definetely wont be done by July 26.

So I was working way too hard trying to understand how to make the 4s lipo batteries work, and I realized that knowing me this battery config probably won’t work and it’ll blow up in front of me, so I decided to use a power bank. After talking to Gemini and other AI’s I went with this power bank. It is extremely thin and good enough to power the whole laptop. https://www.amazon.com/Baseus-Portable-Charger-20000mAh-Charging/dp/B0DK8V9LSV. The power bank is even cheaper than some 4s lipo options so I guess switching is the better option.

I worked more on wiring the battery solution in the schematic, it is taking me a while, but that’s due to the fact that I’m trying to understand it all. I also learned about MOSFET’s.

So today I worked on adding chip ic’s to the USB ports because I realized that if I accidentally plug in my usb-c charger to the wrong spot it’ll fry the board. So I added these Ic’s for extra protection.

I worked on the battery management some more, I don’t quite understand how to make this all come together, but I hope I can eventually figure it out.

I spent today researching possible batteries to use and how I can charge and manage the batteries.

Today I worked on battery management where I decided to use the MAX17048 to view my battery percentage which works pretty good on linux with a single driver but on windows I have to write a python script. Im almost done with the battery management.

So I finished the Schematic and added all of the footprints. Overall everything seems fine I need to figure out what size I want the motherboard to start on the PCB, but as I was going over everything I forgot to add battery monitoring, so I’ll do that soon.

I was planning to start on the PCB today, but apparently the footprints didn’t work, so I spent all the time working on that.

Did some small work on the pewake not working in ERC.

Fixed some small errors, not too much to write about here, they were really basic like for example I accidentally connected some to +3v3’s. I just need to fix these last 2 errors.

I spent the entire 1 hour and 6 minutes working on battling these ERC errors. A lot of them were small issues that could be ignored, but for some I had to rewire some parts. apparently I couldn’t put some parts straight to the GND, so there has to be a part that’s 3V3 as you can see in the second photo. I’m now one step closer to making this laptop a reality. P.S I need to make a better name than “Custom Laptop”

I finished adding all the footprints went through some ERC problems and I found a permanent solution for the Audio. I decided I can just use a USB DAC board to connect laptop speakers.

I finished the USB HUB and the crystal clock for it as seen in the image. I also decided to figure out what I should do with the speakers/microphones, but I learned that I could simply use USB’s so I decided to look for small formfactors of those.

Im almost done with the USB hubs, all of the USBS are wired up and the crystal clock is all thats left.

Finished up the USB2517. I wired everything up (hopefully correctly). All I have left is connecting actual USB ports and I also have to choose what chip to connect the prt power to.

So I made some headway on the USB2517 USB hub for the laptop. I connected it to upstream and figured out how to connect the power. A lot of it was very confusing as the symbol I used was different from most, but I found the datasheet, which helped a ton. I also learned that maybe I can connect the USB ports to USB-C so I can actually have some modern plugs which would be nice.

In my last post, I worked on converting a PCIE to M.2 to eventually convert to more USB’s. I did some more research and learned that this could easily be cut down if I used a microchip. Using the Microchip USB2517 (symbol shown below), I can convert one Usb2.0 to 7 others, this seems overkill, which it kind of is, but I will use the USB for the keyboard, speaker, and other things. Also you can never have too many USB’s, maybe I could buy some converters and turn some into USB-C. There is a problem I’m facing while making this, it’s that this is probably going to bulkier than a macbook or a dell latitude, it’s probably going to end up looking like a Lenovo Legion or LOQ. I will try to shrink some stuff down, but I’d rather have a big laptop with nice features than a basic thin laptop, at the end of the day I am making it.

I decided to turn my PCIE slot to M.2. I don’t really need the PCIE slot but I need more USB slots. Turning the PCIE to M.2 allows me to interchange it for M.2 expansion slots like USB expansions or more SSD’s.

I worked on the Motherboard, I deleted items I wouldn’t need like the PCIE slot and the USB-C power as I will be using a battery. I found various resources including the official Lattepanda Mu motherboard github (Opensource FTW). I also found a whole course on how to make carrier boards for it. I still have a lot more work ahead of me as I barely have much. I am starting to realize how hard this project will truly be, but there needs to be an easy, open source, and up to date laptop. The screenshot includes all my notes and resources for the motherboard.

I’m working on a custom laptop, I started this a while back (fallout), but I didn’t have enough time so now I’m doing it here. My laptop will have a Lattepanda Mu and a detachable keyboard. I’m hoping that it should be able to be used as a flagship device as laptops keep getting harder to fix, while this has many open source parts. For example, want to switch the CPU? just buy a new LattePanda Mu and plug it in. I still need to figure out how to transfer my 10 hours and 40 minutes worth of work onto here.