rafBook
-Guide:
Documentation and planning of the creation of the rafBook, a personal project that aims to strengthen my practical knowledge, demystify the technology we use on a day to day basis and for the “I built it” feeling (I also hope that this means I will be more careful not to damage it).
Inspiration and Research:
The process of Design and brainstorming were significantly influenced by similar projects and organisations. Primary and secondary research prevents expensive redesigns and the design can mimic and borrow successful features and understand what features were plausible and not. Understating the shortcomings of such products and evaluating where the product did not do so well compared to what it did well, can be integrated into my project too.
List of similar products:
- Framework Pro 13
- Apple’s MacBook Pro and Air
- MNT Research’s MNT Reform laptop:
- MNT Research builds laptops and computers that are open at every layer, PCB layouts, firmware, software and mechanical design. The design files and schematics are open source and publicly available. Owners have been granted the rights to study, modify and even manufacture variants. The company also avoids opaque and proprietary components to emphasis their high repairability and transparency.
- I aim to incorporate their beliefs and philosophy into my product along with their
- Pi-Top
- Pi-Top is a company that designs modular computer systems around the Raspberry Pi platform.
- Hackaday DIY Laptop Projects
- Cyberdeck Cafe
- r/CyberDeck
- r/Framework
- Novaspirit Tech
- Jeff Geerling
- System76
- Purism
- E-ink secondary displays
- Mechanical Keyboards
- Custom 3D Printed Shells
Project Overview:
The personal project based on building my own custom laptop, where I can fine tune all the features I want and create the perfect laptop in my eyes.
Targets:
- Core i7 9th-gen (or equivalent) with integrated graphics (GPU will be hard to fit especially with my skill set)
- dual 1TB SSDs. (for Dual Boot of a Linux distro and Windows)
- Certain Display (with good colour accuracy, brightness and low power consumption)
- Speakers
- Keyboard (possibly with LED backlights or OLED panel displaying what each key is, so language swapping is easier)
- WiFi (and maybe external antenna)
- Cellular implementation (M.2 WWAN or mPCIe module).