Accessory Building a portable monitor, anyone tried it yet?

Analogue Blacksheep

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Dec 2, 2018
831
688
Hello all, I'm thinking about building my own portable monitor. Long story short, I do graphic design and are currently looking for very colour accurate portable monitor. Problem is, there is a lack of decent monitors that would fit the bill and the ones that seem to exist seem to be part of crowd funding campaign that ended a while ago. So I'm thinking of building my own using a laptop screen, a case and a controller.

I've seen this screen and this kit on aliexpress which would work, but I can imagine the import taxes and potential shipping times would be hilarious.

So has anyone built a portable monitor and got it working. Also has anyone from the UK built one? Know any good recommendations?
 
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tomtom070

Efficiency Noob
May 18, 2017
6
6
Yes, I've build one. But nothing color accurate. I just had an old laptop screen and bought a controller for it of ebay for like 10-20€. It's not a very difficult thing to do. Also mine is not battery powered, I build it more for LAN Partys/Game Jams where it has to be portable, but can be powered through an outlet. But a battery should be easy to add. It might be more complicated if you want to power it via usb.
For the taxes: I don't live in the UK, I'm from Germany, but I would assume something around 20% + a processing fee. At least that's what I have to pay here, but you can just google it.
 
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Valantar

Shrink Ray Wielder
Jan 20, 2018
2,201
2,225
Yeah, I doubt you'll get anything "very color accurate" by DIY, simply because the controller boards don't support 3D LUTs or other necessary ways of doing proper calibration, meaning that all you'll be able to do is adjust the R/G/B values for an approximate calibration at a given brightness level. Factory calibration should burn the calibration into display driver ROM/firmware and be far more comprehensive than this.


Beyond that, I recently did the same as @tomtom070 and built one from an old spare laptop screen and a controller board off ebay. Works fine, though my display panel is garbage and the housing I cobbled together is... unimpressive. A kit like the one you linked to is likely much nicer. I've got mine battery powered through a power bank with USB-C PD support and a tiny PD negotiator board soldered to the 12V input of the controller board. Very easy to set up as long as you're comfortable soldering (or you could just get one of those pre-made type-C-to-barrel jack adapters, of course).