Recycling an old laptop screen into a portable external monitor
That we are living in difficult times is not something that comes as a surprise. For just over a year now, we have been in the midst of a global pandemic that has brought the whole world, including electronics factories, to a standstill.
Add to that the fact that during the confinements imposed by governments to try to mitigate the spread of the virus, teleworking was promoted as a way of working, which led to a sudden increase in demand for all kinds of electronic products. Demand outstripped supply and prices immediately rose and thousands of products that everyone needed were sold out. With factories shut down, there was no way to replenish what had been sold… and you never know when a ship will run aground in the wrong place.
In addition to the above, the alarm has long been raised about the electronic waste produced by the excessive consumerism of today’s society, which causes a lot of pollution in the environment. This is why governments in different countries are trying to raise awareness about recycling and are increasingly requiring companies to manufacture products that are easily recyclable.
How do we begin?
First of all, we need a laptop that does not work. In my case I had an old laptop that had a burnt graphics card but everything else was working perfectly at the time. If you do not have a broken laptop on hand, you can try looking for a broken laptop on second-hand applications. Sometimes you can even directly find the screen separately.
OK, I have a laptop. Now what?
Now, what we are interested in is getting the display panel. Keep in mind that unless we know the panel used by the screen we are dealing with, it is very likely (especially if it was from a cheap laptop) that the result will be a bit disappointing.
To begin with, we remove the panel from the surrounding casing. Every laptop is different so if you do not know how to remove the casing, there are many videos on YouTube about them and sometimes by searching for the laptop model you can find some results to follow the procedure. If everything went well, you should have the panel free of the casing.
We must now look at two important details:
- The first is to see how many connectors the screen has, in this case one (the connector with two wires at the bottom of the photo).
- The second is the panel model. In this case it depends on each unit and will normally be on one of the stickers it has.
For this panel, the sticker at the bottom left shows Model No: B154EW02. With this information, go to https://www.panelook.com/ and enter the model number. As we can see in the selector, there are a few options but if we look more closely at the sticker on the panel we can see a V.1 after the model number, so we choose B154EW02 V1 and the website will show us the details.
The most important are the ones inside the red rectangles:
- The rectangle on the left shows the interface type which determines the type of cable to use to connect the panel, for this model it is 1 channel and 6 bits (other models can use 2 channels and 8 bits). And below the interface type is the power consumption of the panel, which in this case is 3.3 volts, which must be taken into account when configuring the motherboard to use.
- The right rectangle is used to check how many connectors the panel has. In this case we see that it has only one CCFL connector [1 pcs].
And what do I do with all this data?
Now comes the fun part, let’s go shopping! I am going to show you the components I bought when I did the project, they may not be available by the time you read this but I am sure you can find a replacement very easily. Do not worry, I will not post any referral links.
The easiest option is to buy an all-in-one pack, but in the product title you can see that it says 2ch 8bit 40Pins LVDS Cable.
And if you remember from the last section, this model uses a 1ch 6bit LVDS cable, so I needed to buy it separately and I chose this one.
Also, you can see that this all-in-one pack has a 4pcs Lamp Inverter, but this model uses 1pcs connector so I needed to buy it separately and I chose this one.
If you use one side of the 4pcs Lamp Inverter or a 2pcs Lamp Inverter, it will not work. Why do I know it does not work? Well… I do (The panel I was originally going to use was from my first laptop and that panel used 2 connectors as it had two lamps, so in that case the 4 Lamp Inverter worked because for one of the inverters all the connectors were used).
Hooray, all the packages have arrived!
The first thing to do, is to change the jumper that regulates the voltage supplied to the display. If we do not do it, and we forget to do it later and try to test the screen… bye-bye screen.
As we saw in the details of the panel, it needs a 3.3 volt power supply, so we change the jumper to the correct pin pair. Pay attention to the equivalences, each motherboard model may differ from the one shown in this tutorial.
Once this important detail has been taken care of, all that remains is to connect the rest of the components, which are almost intuitive.
Now, it is important to check if everything works as espected. Going back to the link of the all-in-one pack, in the Overview tab we can see New Version T.SK105A.03 Firmware and a link to the ZIP file with all the drivers. At the time of writing this post, the drivers from the pack I have linked here are not available. If you buy another option, the ZIP should look like this:
Although there are many files, you only need to look at those that match the resolution of the panel you are using. When you have found a suitable one, on an empty FAT32 formatted pen drive, copy the .BIN file extracted from the ZIP into the root directory.
This must be done with care, if during the installation of the driver the power is cut off, the board becomes unusable.
With the board disconnected from the power supply, connect the pen drive and after connecting it, plug the board into the power supply. The LED (red) will light up and we wait a few seconds for it to start flashing slowly, then we wait a few seconds more and it will start flashing fast. This is when the driver is being installed, you should wait at least 1 minute after which you should suddenly disconnect the power supply and remove the pen drive. Then connect the board to the power supply and you should see the basic menu.
It may happen that it looks strange, that is because the number of depth bits of the screen is wrongly configured.
To fix this, press the MENU key on the remote control, then press the code 1147 and a “secret” menu will appear.
In it we go to PANEL SETTING and then select the option LVDS COLOR DEPTH, changing the value to 6 bits, 8 bits or 10 bits as appropriate.
And that is it!
When it comes to setting everything up, it helps if you have a handy parent, as they can make you a frame where you can place everything comfortably.
An important thing to keep in mind when setting everything up is to position the speakers correctly, otherwise the left and right channels could be reversed. In my case the right speaker was the one with the sticker with Chinese letters. Also, remember to drill the holes for the speakers:
I have decided to place the connectors on the left side:
The only problem I have is that the remote control receiver is inside the frame, and if I want to use the remote control I have to point it at some area of the screen in the bottom right corner.
Testing the invention
After all this work, it is time to test whether this invention works and is useful. It can be used to watch sports, series, films or TV programmes while doing work or anything else.
In addition, having bought a pack with speakers, it can be used as a portable player as long as you have a power socket nearby. By inserting a FAT32 formatted USB stick, you can play music, pictures and videos.
In the case of music, the speakers are quite powerful and sound pretty decent for what they are worth. The playback menu is very simple and intuitive.
In the case of films, the playback menu is also very simple and by navigating between the different elements, if we pause on each one, the video will be played as a preview (but without subtitles).
If we follow the scheme used for example with the VLC player and give the same name to the video file and the subtitle file, the player will load the subtitles automatically.
To sum up
We have seen how with a few components and by reusing parts from a broken laptop we can make a “portable” external display. Either for use in conjunction with a computer as a second monitor or on its own to play music, pictures and videos.
Although the final result will depend on how lucky you are with the panel you use, you can see that it does the job perfectly.
And if you have made it this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read the post, I hope it encourages you to make your own version!
