Project: Building a DIY Ultra Portable Laptop

From Dante Roumega on hackster.io:

As you may have seen in a previous project we made a Raspberry Pi and Arduino laptop out of some cheap parts and cardboard. As you might have guessed cardboard isn't the best material to make a laptop out of.

So in today's project we are going to recreate that laptop but this time it will be smaller, faster and neater. In this project we will make use of a Pi 3b+, Autodesk's Fusion 360 design software and 3D printing.

While it is possible to use a Raspberry Pi for this project, the same type of project could be accomplished using other single board computers as well. Some of them would make this project considerably simpler as in the case of the ODROID-C0 which doesn't have any through-hole components pre-mounted (see picture) and has a built-in battery power and charging circuit as well. The Raspberry Pi 3A+ would also be a good choice as it is already low-profile and small, but lacks the battery charging circuitry.

If you wish to recreate this project similarly to the author, here are the parts you would need, available from ameriDroid:

• Raspberry Pi 3B (or might we recommend the Raspberry Pi 3A+ which would be simpler both in size and would require minimal desoldering)
• Mini wireless keyboard with trackpad
• 3.5" LCD display (available elsewhere) or 5" HDMI display
• microSD card
• Female USB ports

Read more about Dante's implementation here, or watch it at the bottom of this post. Among other things, this would be a great portable retro-gaming console.

If you'd like to create the same project, but using an ODROID-C0 instead, it should cost less and be simpler to install with these parts:

• ODROID-C0
• Mini wireless keyboard with trackpad
• 3.5" LCD display or 5" HDMI display
• microSD card or eMMC module
• 3000mAH Battery
• Female USB ports

If you'd like to create a killer project with a larger keyboard/trackpad, two single-board computers, and two 7" HDMI displays based around the full-sized keyboard you see here, tell us all about it. If we get enough requests, we'll actually build one of our own and create a tutorial for it!

Watch Dante's build video below: