Show HN: I Made an Open-Source Laptop from Scratch
Comments
montroser
snake_doc
Okay, I'll help him humble brag:
Bryan is in his last year of high school.
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Keep building!
chuckwfinley
This is incredible work for anyone, let alone a high schooler. Seriously impressive!
I hope this turns into something I can buy (maybe a diy kit), in the future!
ricardonunez
We are going full circle, Woz will be proud.
Hello9999901
Thanks! I've been considering it (or enough detailed instructions to build one) since starting the project. I need to get a working model first though ;)
GardenLetter27
You study quantum mechanics in High School in the USA?
Hello9999901
We discussed wave functions, probability, fermions/bosons, did calculations for particle in a box, the Schrödinger model, and went just up to deriving the hydrogen atom. Nothing super fancy, but it was one heck of an experience!
mattnewton
Some do- He thanks Phillips Exeter at the bottom of the project page, which is a very fancy private highschool, probably the best in the US.
macNchz
I went to a peer school that had at least a couple of math teachers with PhDs—my friends at the time who took their classes were, if I recall, nationally competitive in math olympiads.
rafram
It's more possible than you'd think! The options are basically:
- Go to a fancy private school like Phillips Exeter
- Really luck out and get into a great public STEM magnet school
- Homeschool and take private classes / have very smart parents
rafram
Oh, or:
- Concurrently enroll at a community college (a really great option that I think every country should have)
cbmamolo
All I did was provide him the space and time to work on the project ... his parents funded the entire project, but will get reimbursement soon. It's the great minds, and the desire to have meaningful projects that make Exeter such an awesome place. Byran is one of a kind!!!!
2muchcoffeeman
Can't tell if this is sarcasm.
rafram
The community college option is available to anyone who’s willing to spend a couple evenings a week taking classes, so I don’t think it’s really that out of reach. Most countries don’t offer their high school students any opportunity to study material that advanced.
TeMPOraL
In the high school in Poland I attended, I lucked into being in a class with a university TA assigned as physics teacher, and he did manage to sneak in QM - more-less the same stuff as 'Hello9999901 listed in their reply.
(He also taught us differentiation in the first semester, and basic integrals in the second, because as he said, you cannot learn physics properly without those tools. This annoyed the heck out of our math teacher; she ended up deciding that, if we're learning this anyway, we might as well learn it properly - and gave us a much heavier intro to calculus in the last months of the last year.)
govg
Not all high schools but the US has some schools which allow you to take very advanced material / even get a head start on your college credits.
mschuster91
We had a cursory introduction at least about 15 years ago in Germany, it's not that far off.
d3rockk
HOF HN post.
gerdesj
Care to explain?
lxe
This is one of those special HN posts that demonstrates outsized excellence on the author's behalf. Watched the video and I'm very impressed.
Hello9999901
Truly appreciate it thank you so much!! I poured my life and soul into this haha.
cbmamolo
You sure did!
petsfed
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
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!
triyambakam
Hey Bryan, great work and very inspiring. This has me meta curious about how a project like this is possible. Besides the support from your school, I imagine that your parents have been a big part of your success?
nashashmi
Looks good. Could be a small step to my vision for a dock dependent palm sized pc with high powered cpu connected by a single USB C with no other ports except for micro sd. And backed up by a mini battery for power stability on low watt chargers.
Hello9999901
Thanks! Have you taken a look at the Khadas Mind [1]? Super similar to what you're talking about with the handheld PC.
chironjit
I actually spent quite some time trying to build a custom driver for a custom screen for my Framework 13, only to burn the screen driver.
Very impressed by what you have done here. Kudos to you on achieving designing and building a whole laptop!
Hello9999901
Thank you so much! If you'd like to discuss further, please let me know! My email is in the website. I have a Framework 16 and have tons of ideas. Never got around to it though. (I also burned a few screens, and had 3 as backup haha).
amelius
I'm curious how the USB-C connectors are made to the outside of the enclosure.
What I've found is that it's a bad idea to use USB extension cables; these can introduce bit errors if e.g. you copy large amounts of data (order of terabytes). It's much better to insert a USB drive directly into a carrier board, but this is not always physically possible.
Hello9999901
It's almost standard to have the USB-C have extra wiggle-room (around 1mm or so). Then, the housing is 1mm past the USB-C connector. That's how the casings are made so that when you stick the connector in, it's flush or nearly so.
I agree with USB extension cables concerns too! The error would increase depending on the quality (impedance, power, etc.)
amelius
> Then, the housing is 1mm past the USB-C connector.
Yes, this is often the case but sometimes the USB-C connectors are on the same side of the board where you also need to plug in some cables that you need internally (maybe even other USB devices). Thus the option of letting an USB-C port stick out on one side of the enclosure is not always available.
> I agree with USB extension cables concerns too! The error would increase depending on the quality (impedance, power, etc.)
Yes, and the user of your device (who doesn't see the internal cable) will assume that they can plug in their own cable, so you'll have two cables.
aio2
my guess is when doing college applications, you figured you had to do something special to get into a good college, so you decided to do this lol
Doesn't matter why, pretty sick. I'm studying physics myself, so its pretty inspiring to see you do this
Hello9999901
Thank you so much! The story behind the laptop was quite interesting — my friends and I were going to an athletics event far away, and he brought up the idea that I should make a laptop for my senior project as a joke (our school offers 1 free class for a "project", graciously funded by the school). I said "hell yeah." That's pretty much how this came to be, college didn't play much of a role imho. And best of luck studying physics!
mschuster91
Holy. That's an achievement very few people can claim. Wonder if HN has a "hall of fame", a worthy entry.
You did the smart thing there with the SoM (for the uninitiated: power sequencing to individual parts of an SoC and its external components is an epic hassle to get right and that's assuming you actually have proper documentation - without it it's an utter pain), but how in hell did you get the high frequency stuff working out on what was likely your first or second try? This is IMHO where your work really shines.
USB-C, DisplayPort (at 4K to boot) and PCIe at modern speeds are all but black magic to most, this isn't digital any more, this is good old analog circuitry and physics at work that most people don't even learn in university any more.
Hello9999901
Thank you so much — yes, that was the hardest part of this entire project! I spent 2 months getting eDP working (second PCB thankfully).
I had the honor of learning high speed signaling from the best. I met some super cool people from Silicon Valley and research universities (from past work, like the MUREX Ethernet Switch). The ZMK Firmware community too!
mschuster91
> from past work, like the MUREX Ethernet Switch
Just looked it up... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40694254 for those who want a direct link.
Jesus. Wish I had had even a fraction your talent at that age. Most impressive.
Hello9999901
I truly appreciate your encouragement. I can only imagine how successful you are! Thank you!
j3s
VERY impressive. the laptop looks great. wish you could manufacture and sell the thing, i'd consider one :)
Hello9999901
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!
junon
This is so, so cool. Reminds me of Clockwork Pi stuff. Thanks for sharing :)
andrewmcwatters
Sick! Finally someone posting something that puts the “hacker” in HN.
Love the parts research you did.
Hello9999901
Thank you so much!
camtarn
Genuinely incredible work. Looking forward to seeing what other cool projects you do in the future.
MrDrMcCoy
This is fantastic! I hope to follow in your footsteps as soon as a decent RISC-V board can supplant that RK3588.
Hello9999901
I'd love to see one; hope to see that day come!!
laidoffamazon
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
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 :)
KolmogorovComp
Very impressive work, and also nice video editing. Congrats.
tuktuktuk
Amazin! what's the total cost for you?
Hello9999901
Hanging around 5 grand. Unfortunately the R&D process was rough! The R&D BOM is linked below, feel free to take a look. If you were to build it, I'd estimate it costing around 1500 dollars (or less).
someothherguyy
Back in my day, I thought spending $50 in wood shop was rough.
madsmith
Amazing project.
Palomides
nice work!
how much was it to get the case milled?
Hello9999901
Thanks! Around $300 total from JLCCNC with 6061 aluminum, bead blasting, and matte black anodization (top, midplate, bottom).
bflesch
well done, thanks for documenting and congratulations on completing the project!
Hello9999901
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. :)
aunver
Congratulations Byran, this is really impressive work!
spicysev
Holy hell. This is so cool ~ an admirer
teddy__d
amazing job!!
handfuloflight
What's the BOM?
Hello9999901
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...
ge96
damn it looks clean
baritodespa1
gg byran well played
_fw
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
Thank you so much!
gerdesj
At which point was the mental map created within Obsidion and did you really need it?
You are clearly a very clever person and you do not need a web app wiggly graph thingie to throw ideas together.
There's no need to gild a lily!
Please keep the faith - I love that you are focussed on being altruistic and sharing your skills to the benefit of everyone.
Thank you.
Byran... This is seriously impressive. You are very blessed to be so capable in so many disciplines -- design, hardware, software, storytelling. It is a massively complicated undertaking, and you executed in style. Nice work, and remember to use your formidable powers for good!