Would you believe me if I told you you should not throw away your old (maybe broken) laptop because it
could
become your next favorite piece of equipement?
While most users see laptop as a unique device, I prefer to see it as the assembly of multiple smaller
independant parts: a motherboard, a keyboard, a webcam, a screen...
So when I failed to repair my brother's laptop motherboard I immediately scavanged all the parts I could
reuse.
Eventhough the screen looks very promising at first glance it is not the easiest part to refurbish as
laptop
screens are bare LCD panels with proprietary connectors and no control board to handle external signals
like
HDMI.
Fortunatly there are a lot of control boards available online and with a bit of research I found one
matching the LCD panel I had.
With the control board received I connected the board to the screen and performed a test. Everything
worked
perfectly fine so it was time to build a stand to make that screen useable.
For that I simply used a thin piece of wood that I cut and drilled so the screen could be glued on the
front
and the cables routed toward the back. By using some standoffs I mounted the control board on the other
side
and added another small piece of wood on top of it to protect it while leaving all the ports accessible.
A
small hinge screwed to the last wooden piece made a perfect support for the screen to stay upright.
With a few more finishing touches like rounding the edges with a wood rasp and sand paper, adding a coat
of
wood stain and managing the control board's cables, the screen was complete!!
The final product is surprisingly usable. The control board support HDMI, VGA, DVI as well as audio.
There
are a couple of buttons to navigate into the basic but fonctional UI.
Being made out of wood, the stand is a little bit on the heavy side but very resistant and compact
making it
very portable as long as you are careful not to scratch the screen. Eventhough the stand is not rising
the
screen, the hinge on the back allows for a wide range of tilt so the screen could be used just like a
real
laptop screen.
As all the materials were reused, the entiere cost of the project is reduced to the price of the control
board which was about 20 euros. Not to expensive for creating a DIY computer screen and saving a
perfectly
working LCD panel from the landfill...