Building a Pi-based ARM laptop

Lead Image © Iveta Aleksandrova Angelova, 123RF.com

Pi Laptop

Building a Raspberry Pi-based laptop isn't difficult, but you'll need to gather some parts and follow the assembly instructions carefully. We show you how.

Becky Stern of Adafruit industries set me on the path of building my very own Raspberry Pi laptop late last year when her blog post describing such a device brought sudden popularity to the idea [1]. Although this was hardly the first mention of such a device, Stern's YouTube video detailing the creation of the necessary "frankencable" virally spread the idea. Many alternative designs followed in what is now a 31-page thread on the Pi Foundation's forum [2], but the core idea remains the same: building an ARM-powered laptop backed by a Raspberry Pi.

Inception

After seeing the blog post on Adafruit's [3] site, I immediately rushed to eBay to secure the key component of the build: an Atrix 4G lapdock (Figure 1). It would be no exaggeration to say I purchased this component before I even watched the video or read the instructions, because I expected that sudden demand would deplete the supply – or at least affect prices. My eagerness paid off, and I secured a brand new unit for the paltry sum of US$  35, shipping included (see Figure  2).

Your luck may vary, but my recommendation is that you take your time procuring this one part if you are budget conscious, because it can easily double the total cost of this project (see the parts list in Table 1 for details).

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