Monitor 15.6" 1080p IPS with stereo speakers. USB-C powered. $110 when bought. First one broke in the first hour. Replacement seems good. I stress tested it for 13 hours. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VFF4TZG
Cables: micro hdmi to mini hdmi. usbc to usbc to power the rpi. usb-a to usb-c to power the monitor.
Rotary cutting tool: I already had a Dremel but it was battery powered and the battery was old. I wanted to upgrade to a wired one. This one worked pretty well and the metal cutting disc for wood/plastic worked great on the art box. $34. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FSBY9GV/
Optional drill: make more holes for venting!
Twister OS is really neat and you can easily swap the skin to look like windows 10 or mac os: https://twisteros.com/
Details:
It took forever to find a box the right size. It is 14X9X2 which pretty much fits everything perfectly.
I had already owned everything else on the parts list before starting this project except for the plastic box, monitor, and the dremel. I wanted a new dremel and monitor anyways. So I'd say I dedicated $12 specifically to this project. The monitor makes a nice secondary monitor for a regular laptop or a bigger screen for Nintendo Switch.
It weighs about 5.5 lbs total.
I wanted a large 15.6 screen. Portability was secondary. I'm getting old and small screens are much harder on the eyes for me.
My dremel skills are horrible, and the cuts are really rough. I didn't really care about looks that much.
I cut the corners off the velcro dots so they fit better on the corners of the lid.
Make sure you put the soft side of the dots on the monitor cover (both the side to attach to the box and the inside for the keyboard)
You can open the box with the monitor still attached. Just be careful it doesn't flop backwards hard.
I used elastic cord to keep everything together when moving it around. You could just as easily add some more velcro dots instead.
Cutout on the left for easy access to ethernet and usb ports. Cutout on the right to get to the battery so I can unplug the monitor and rpi 4 to save battery. I had a little usb-c power switch dongle that worked great with an ac adapter but doesn't seem to work with this battery. So I just unplug everything from the battery on the right side when not in use. I can also easily charge the battery through the cutout.
I have 2 dividers attached together with duct tape and cut down half height. I use it to separate the rpi 4 and the battery so I can plug cables into the battery without pushing it into the case. It's half height so cables can still be laid on top.
I routed the cables out and back in the back side of the case for micro hdmi and usb-c power to the rpi 4 to prevent bending the cable so much.
Temps stay under 60c under load.
Lots of room for improvements. I need to find a better way to stabilize the monitor cover hinge. Still, it works pretty well on your lap for the most part.
Typing is a little cumbersome mostly because of how thick it is.
Totally NOT worth building from scratch. You can easily get a real laptop that is a lot more portable and usable for the money.
