Boredom-bred Tech Ideas

In Part 1 of the Pi-based Laptop, I have mentioned that I needed to look for an SBC that is more powerful than the Raspberry Pi 3B+ to power the laptop. Do refer back to that particular post to check out what I am looking for. Since there are so many SBCs in the market now, I have decided to be very strict in my elimination process. As long as the SBC does not hit one of the core criterias that will affect performance, it will be dropped. I will, however, make some leeway for criterias that should not affect the performance too much such as the WiFi not supporting 802.11ac. After searching around (admittedly it got boring very quickly), I have narrowed down my search a little by including major boards that run on the RockChip RK3399 (hexa-core, 4-cores @ 1.5GHz, 2- cores @ 2.0GHz). I have also included boards that seem powerful enough on paper. The budget I'm looking at? SG$180 for the SBC and its components (~US$140). So here are the final contenders: Rock64 RockPro64...

Following up from a previous post, I have started to source out components to build a Pi-based laptop. As mentioned, using a Raspberry Pi 3B+ is out of the question, as I want a faster laptop that I am able to tolerate using as an everyday carry. I feel that the laptop needs to fulfill the following criteria physically for me to use it as an everyday carry:- Item Requirement Lightweight < 1.5kg Small form factor A4 paper (30cm * 21cm) Thickness < 1.8cm Connectivity Minimum 2 x USB Type A ports, Ethernet jack, HDMI output, Headphone Jack, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Battery Life Minimum 4 hours Thus far, I think the hardest requirement to meet is the 1.8cm thickness as I plan to integrate a keyboard and a trackpad into the main body itself. Neither of which are easy to fit into such a thin form factor. Additionally, I need the laptop to be operating smoothly (so that I won't throw the laptop on the floor after completing it, in rage). As such, I also...

If you head over to the sudomod wiki page you can find a list of items needed for you to build a Gameboy Zero from scratch. However, a lot of these items are expensive to me, such as the Adafruit PowerBoost and any other things that have to be shipped either from US or UK. So I started sourcing for my own parts from other places (mainly China) to try to obtain a list of items that are as cheap as possible, but functionally similar to the original parts. Thankfully, the sudomod wiki has an list of alternatives for every item that is needed, and comments if the item has been used in any other GBZ projects with or without success. So after Googling around as well, I have come up with a list of items that I will use instead of those on the GBZ with custom parts wiki. Here is a list of the more important components:- Screen: 3.5'' GearBest Composite screen Charging circuit: Got from eBay, Looks similar to the Banggood PowerBoost Battery: 4 x Lithium-ion cells (14500) Button PCB...