[HN Gopher] Show HN: I Made an Open-Source Laptop from Scratch
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Show HN: I Made an Open-Source Laptop from Scratch
Hello! I'm Byran. I spent the past ~6 months engineering a laptop
from scratch. It's fully open-source on GH at:
https://github.com/Hello9999901/laptop
Author : Hello9999901
Score : 206 points
Date : 2025-01-22 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.byran.ee)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.byran.ee)
| aunver wrote:
| Congratulations Byran, this is really impressive work!
| teddy__d wrote:
| amazing job!!
| baritodespa1 wrote:
| gg byran well played
| handfuloflight wrote:
| What's the BOM?
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| Thanks for the question. I'm working on compiling the BOM in
| these few days. A preliminary R&D BOM is here (apologies, it's
| in Google Sheets):
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17arbJvPqW6koqEJwAzne...
| _fw wrote:
| Holy fuck
|
| People like Byran live amongst us
|
| Making their own laptops but from SCRATCH
|
| Imagine how good this man's pasta carbonara tastes
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| Thank you so much!
| ge96 wrote:
| damn it looks clean
| spicysev wrote:
| Holy hell. This is so cool ~ an admirer
| Palomides wrote:
| nice work!
|
| how much was it to get the case milled?
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| Thanks! Around $300 total from JLCCNC with 6061 aluminum, bead
| blasting, and matte black anodization (top, midplate, bottom).
| bflesch wrote:
| well done, thanks for documenting and congratulations on
| completing the project!
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| Truly appreciate it. I spent many weeks afterwards documenting
| the steps as thoroughly as I could. My email's on the site if
| anyone needs to reach out, as well. :)
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| Very nice. Wish there were faster SOMs than the 3588 but maybe in
| a year or two.
|
| Looks like an MIT admissions portfolio project. Don't know if it
| fits the uniqueness category for it but I guess the quality of
| the end product makes it good enough.
|
| Admittedly this isn't fully open source like the Novena or the
| Reform but I doubt adcomms care. I just wish I was rich enough
| and skilled enough to be able to spend $4.5k on a neat project
| like this.
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| Thanks for your suggestions and criticism! Much appreciated.
| Which aspect of it (aside from the SoM, which I admittedly do
| not have the R&D to make in this timescale) isn't open-source?
| I'd love to hear your thoughts. The Novena and Reform are
| amazing pieces of engineering, but I believe they sacrifice the
| portability and looks for repairability which some people
| certainly prefer. I wanted to aim for something that a non-
| technical consumer might look and say "hmm, nice laptop!" and
| not think it came out of the matrix or built it myself.
|
| In terms of college, still waiting :)
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Sick! Finally someone posting something that puts the "hacker" in
| HN.
|
| Love the parts research you did.
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| Thank you so much!
| j3s wrote:
| VERY impressive. the laptop looks great. wish you could
| manufacture and sell the thing, i'd consider one :)
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| Maybe, depending on reception! I geared it so it could be
| manufactured at a semi-small scale. Unfortunately, I don't have
| the capacity to make them myself :(. Thank you for the
| interest!
| snake_doc wrote:
| Okay, I'll help him humble brag:
|
| Bryan is in his last year of high school.
|
| </end>
|
| Keep building!
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| You study quantum mechanics in High School in the USA?
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| This is fantastic! I hope to follow in your footsteps as soon as
| a decent RISC-V board can supplant that RK3588.
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| I'd love to see one; hope to see that day come!!
| junon wrote:
| This is so, so cool. Reminds me of Clockwork Pi stuff. Thanks for
| sharing :)
| petsfed wrote:
| This is really cool!
|
| There are some obvious next steps for improving the polish on
| this, would you say you were more resource constrained, time
| constrained, or skill constrained?
|
| For instance, did you put any thought into making flex PCBs to
| make the cable routing easier?
|
| I also think the concept of a laptop with a removable wireless
| keyboard is brilliant, and I think your implementation is a lot
| cleaner than e.g. the Surface or the iPad's case-keyboards. If I
| had a laptop that did that, it would be my go-to travel machine.
| One less thing to cart around.
| Hello9999901 wrote:
| Hey! Thank you for the question. For sure, it's not a polished
| product and I don't mean for it to be. It works surprisingly
| well. (I've used it as my daily driver for school) With college
| apps and school work, the time was tight. I'd say that was the
| most limiting. Of course, resource and skill played its role. I
| did consider flex PCBs, but I didn't have the time to follow
| through with all the ambitions (i also wanted an FOC input
| sigh).
|
| I'm honored that you think my keyboard implementation is nice!
| I put a lot of thought into it -- truly. Oh btw the keyboard
| works just as well as a solo device. I've used the keyboard
| more than the computer in some ways. Thanks!
| camtarn wrote:
| Genuinely incredible work. Looking forward to seeing what other
| cool projects you do in the future.
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(page generated 2025-01-22 23:00 UTC)