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MIKE'S MODS
A REPOSITORY FOR THE THINGS I'VE BUILT, HACKED, AND WASTED TIME ON
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HACKING THE MACBOOK PRO RETINA LCD, PART 4: FIRST PCB TESTS
65 Replies
Welcome back! It’s been more than a month and a half since my last post on the
Macbook Pro Retina panel – damn my “real job” and the time it consumes. But
we’re here now, so let’s dive into things.
In the previous two posts on this subject, I have talked about two boards that I
have been developing for the 15.4″ Macbook Pro Retina display assembly: a
breakout for the FaceTime camera, and the main display controller / backlight
driver board. Well, in the month-and-a-half that has elapsed, both boards have
been received and built. Let’s start by taking a look at the former.
CAMERA BREAKOUT
When I went to order these boards, I did so immediately after the cutoff for the
current OSH Park 4 layer order, so the estimated delivery time was three or four
weeks. Unhappy and impatient, I held off and instead ordered the board as
2-layer for more instant gratification. The two inner layers are only GND, so
this is possible without too much trouble. It throws off the impedance of the
USB traces probably significantly, but as the entire trace length is a half inch
or so, I figured it’d be close enough for at least temporary use.
So the boards arrived a week and a half later. I immediately noticed something
interesting and bothersome. Board fab houses typically require a gap between
the edge of any copper and the routed board edge. If you are making a small
board and including mounting pads for screws, the pads may consume a large
percentage of the total board area – in fact, the pads may well drive the
overall dimensions of the board, and larger dimensions mean greater board cost.
I wanted this board to screw mount, but even the 2-56 screws I designed for
needed quite significant pads. I decided it would be nice to trim the amount of
room wasted on mount pads by clipping the pads at the board edge, allowing the
screw to extend into the no-copper area at the edges of the board – it really
only drops a few cents from the board in this case, but it makes me feel better.
So in Altium Designer, I made a small Pad on Multilayer (the magic layer which
is copied to all other layers), then made a Polygon in the shape of a circle
with a flat edge and also placed this on Multilayer. In theory, this should
have resulted in a round pad with a flat edge, drilled and plated through as
expected – in fact, the 3D render of the board shows this:
Mount pads look OK here.
But what arrived from the fab was this:
There aren’t supposed to be voids in those mount pads…
When I poured the rest of the GND polygon, apparently Altium attempted to
connect to the inner Pad, and generated Polygon Cutouts surrounding it, which
happened also to cut the Multilayer polygon. It didn’t show in the PCB editor,
although it did in the Gerbers – but I was in too much of a hurry when ordering
to notice. Oops. But so be it, it’s only the mount pads.
I then assembled the board, and with bated breath, plugged it into a USB port.
And Hooray! The Device Connected sound sounded, and the camera showed up in
device manager. But, strangely, the power LED was orange. I specified a green
LED, I thought I placed a green LED, but it was bright orange. I checked the
package to be sure but it was correct. It was then that I discovered a tiny
short, and simultaneously learned that if you apply 5V directly across a 2.1V
green LED, it becomes an orange LED. Neato! It also gets real real hot. But
miraculously, after I corrected the short, which had caused the full USB voltage
to appear across the LED, it returned to green and operated as normal. So I
guess I can say, these OSRAM CHIPLED parts seem to be pretty hardy! I
unfortunately don’t have any photos, but these parts are cheap, so buy some and
experiment for yourself. Science!
After a few days the 4 layer board order deadline had arrived again, so (having
not discovered nor corrected the pad issue) I re-ordered the board as 4-layer,
this time adding a second transient suppressor for the ALS connector… because
why not, and you can always short it with jumper wires if you don’t want to use
it. So here’s what that looks like (note that I have fixed the pad issue at
this point):
Yep.
I haven’t bothered to build this one yet, but it hasn’t changed significantly
since the 2-layer version, so I suspect it’ll work fine. The files for this
board can be downloaded here:
* PCB10007 REV B GERBERS (13K ZIP)
* PCB10007 REV B LAYERS (22K PDF)
* PCB10007 REV B STENCIL (1K ZIP)
* SCH10007 REV B (49K PDF)
Enjoy!
MAIN CONTROLLER BOARD
Now, the information you’ve all been waiting for. As I said on the previous
post on this subject, I quickly threw together this board to get it in before
the following OSH Park cutoff. As such it’s not perfect, but it is fairly
functional (or so it seems from the minimal amount of testing I’ve done so far).
There’s a lot of new stuff going on on this board, as compared to my iPad board
(on which this one is loosely based). Of course the panel output connector is
different, because the panel is different. Also, though, the barrel jack has
been removed, and a 2-pin shrouded connector has been added in its place.
Barrel jacks, I finally came to realize, are just too damn big and expensive for
a little cheap board like this. The new solution is less than a dollar in
single quantities for plug, receptacle and terminals, whereas the board mount
barrel receptacle was more than a dollar by itself, not counting wire mount
plug. Plus the barrel jack tended to be the tallest component on the board,
driving enclosure dimensions. It takes a bit more work to implement, but I
still think this was a good change.
The dc-dc converters are new as well. The board contains two dc-dc buck
regulators, both based on the AOZ1281 from Alpha & Omega Semiconductor. This
part was chosen due to very low cost – about $0.90 in single quantities – as
well as ample output current (1.8A) and acceptable input voltage range (3-26V).
The board implements this part as one 3.3V/500mA converter and one 3.8V/1A
converter, the former for processor, indicators and other functions, and the
latter for the panel itself, which was investigated and found to run well on
3.8V in a prior post. It’s probably a 5V panel, in retrospect, and I may
someday become ambitious enough to test it at this higher voltage, but for now
3.8V works.
The board shares the same Freescale MKL25Z128VFM4 processor as the iPad board,
again due to cost to performance ratio of the $3 ARM Cortex-M0+ core. Sure, I
could drop $0.50 and put in a MSP430, but I like the potential for other
functions that the more powerful processor enables. I still need to learn how
to program the damn things, but I digress. The other big IC on the board, the
backlight driver, has completely changed compared to the iPad version. Whereas
the iPad panel has 12 backlight channels at 20V apiece, the Macbook has only six
channels but at some 52V. The LT3754 used on the iPad board only does 45V, so a
new backlight driver is needed. Of the (relatively few) integrated boost
converter / LED driver ICs, the best choice for this application seemed to be
the Freescale MC34844A, which happily will push out 60V with appropriate
configuration.
In the interest of keeping this post from being more than fifteen or twenty
pages, I’ll leave the rest of the description to the schematic, but if anything
is unclear please feel free to drop me a comment or email.
Again, this board uses 2-56 mounting screws, and again, I opted to include
clipped pads. And again the boards showed up with voids in the pads. But this
time, inexplicably, some of the pads did not have voids. They were all created
the same way so I can’t quite explain that one yet. But one thing is for sure,
I’ll certainly pay more attention from here on out. I built the pads for one of
my boards at work with clipped edges as well, but this time used top and bottom
polygons instead of one multilayer one. In this way the pads are slightly
smaller in the internal layers, but on the other hand the polygons connect
without issue, so that’s a small price to pay.
Anyway. Here’s the (99%) finished board, lacking only a fuse and transient
suppression diodes in front of the USB port and DP connector:
Top. Ignore the soldered-on power wires.
Bottom.
I’m not 100% happy with it – in particular, I suspect that my overzealous
attempt to match the lengths of the DisplayPort lanes may have actually had an
adverse effect on signal integrity as the traces have to bend a whole lot and
come in much closer range of each other than is really recommended. But I can
say that the board works like this, and I can’t keep from releasing something
forever because I’m not 100% happy with it (or so my boss always says – “You can
always fix it in Rev B”). So here we are.
Now, the processor has control over panel power and backlight on/off and
brightness, so without programming the processor the board won’t do anything.
So, still lacking much experience with the ARM Cortex-M0+ platform, I wrote a
very barebones program that simply turns on the power and backlight driver for
the panel, and additionally powers up the PWM controllers for the offboard
indicator LED. So here’s the board documents, and the source to at least
power-on the necessary systems:
* PCB10006 REV B GERBERS (76K ZIP)
* PCB10006 REV B LAYERS (107K PDF)
* PCB10006 REV B STENCIL (3K ZIP)
* SCH10006 REV B (103K PDF)
* TestPCB10006 (CodeWarrior project, 62K ZIP)
Holy cow, I just realized I never released the documents for the
indicator/button board either! Well, let’s go ahead and do that now too.
Here’s what it looks like:
Pretty simple.
This board is designed to be double-stick taped directly to the back of a panel
at an edge of your choosing (my preference is bottom-right) and connected to the
main board via a wire harness. Some of the other controller boards out there
with buttons onboard have very awkward button placement, so this is a slightly
more expensive but much more elegant solution. The files for this board are
attached here:
* PCB10003 REV B GERBERS (6K ZIP)
* PCB10003 REV B LAYERS (13K PDF)
* SCH10003 REV B (44K PDF)
Whew. This has been a grueling post to prepare. Enough for now. Er, except
for one last picture!
Woohoo!
<< Previous post in this series
This entry was posted in Electronics on 2013-09-29 by mike.
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65 THOUGHTS ON “HACKING THE MACBOOK PRO RETINA LCD, PART 4: FIRST PCB TESTS”
1. JC 2013-10-03 at 06:24
Great Work on the Facetime Camera Breakout Board!!! My question is what
application would you suggest I use to open the gerber and layer files with
or alternately, how can I go about getting a Facetime HD Camera breakout
board to test and try out? Your work has inspired me to educate myself
further in PCB and Electronics design – I can’t say thanks enough.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2013-10-03 at 21:17
The layer file is just a PDF, so you can see what the Gerbers look like
without having to install (or for that matter, load) a proper CAM
viewer. That always irks me, when someone releases a design but only as
fabrication files, and I have to go load up the big-gun software just to
see what the thing looks like. So that’s what the layers doc is for, and
not much else (although I suppose you could use them to etch the
two-layer boards, as they’re printed 1:1). If you really want to look at
the Gerbers themselves, unfortunately a lot of the free software
packages (Eagle, Kicad) don’t support that (to my knowledge). There are
options, however: often the free software GerbView is noted as a way to
do this, but also in searching for answers to your questions I found
http://www.gerber-viewer.com/ which I loaded some of my stuff into and
it seems to render it just fine. You of course can’t edit with that, but
really you don’t want to be editing Gerbers anyway – what a mess that
is. If I ever get my source files in order I’ll post them so people
don’t have to go through that hellish process (can you tell from my tone
that I’ve had to do this a few times before? )
Now, how can you go about getting a board? Well, the easiest way is to
go to OSH Park (http://oshpark.com/), upload the zip file of Gerbers and
order a few – the Gerbers should already be set up in a format that OSH
Park likes. They’re real cheap – 3 boards for $5 shipped – and the
components aren’t pricey either – or you could even solder on a cut USB
cable which we all have hundreds of around, and no-load all the rest of
the components, and it’d probably still work (er, so long as you short
across the transient suppressor IC). Now, getting the camera connector
is going to be the most difficult part, because I honestly don’t know
where to get it or even what the part number might be. I got mine from a
Macbook Air camera processor baseboard, for which I paid about $6 (not
terrible for qty 1 of an exotic connector). You have to be cautious of
exactly which assembly you buy, though, because Apple has used a whole
bunch of different connectors for their camera assemblies over the
years. I looked at several boards and identified one as having the
correct connector from the seller’s photo before I bought it – you can
see photos of the board I bought in this post:
http://mikesmods.com/mm-wp/?p=340 .
Now if your question is “can I buy an assembled board from you”… that
one’s probably “no”, simply because I don’t like having to rely on
ripping connectors off of eBay camera modules to build these things. If
I ever find a source for new connectors, though, I’ll happily rethink
that.
You’re very welcome for the inspiration I have been toying with
electronics for practically as long as I can remember, and it continues
to be a field where the more I learn, the more I find I don’t know and
want to learn. If you need any help as you delve into this stuff, please
don’t hesitate to drop me a comment or an email.
Reply ↓
2. Andrew 2013-11-01 at 18:04
Hello! Do you plan to sell this boards? I’d like to buy one for my damaged
laptop assembly if possible. Thank’s!
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2013-11-02 at 05:13
To tell you the truth, there’s not been a whole lot of demand for them
yet. The initial costs I have to incur to sell these (bulk component
purchases to make them affordable, stencil since I refuse to manually
paste any more of the damn things) have to be offset by projected sales
of the board, and right now that’s not happening. Plus I’ve got a plan
to switch out some components once I get ahold of a healthy enough
source of the alternative, so I’d want to do that before I invest in a
stencil or production-quantity boards.
In summary, unless you’ve got a few friends, I don’t have plans in the
short-term. But keep an eye out, because it may happen sometime in the
future.
Reply ↓
3. Max 2013-11-07 at 11:42
Have you seen this?
http://dp2mbpr.rozsnyo.com/
If your version would cost half of that incl. shipping I’d be happy to
order one even without a camera breakout.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2013-11-07 at 18:36
Hmm. Actually, Daniel Rosznyo helped me out a bit as I worked through
the reverse engineering process, as can be seen from some of the early
posts on the subject.
The BOM cost of $150 does seem a bit steep, though, considering I
calculate the BOM cost of my boards somewhere around the $60 mark, not
counting ancillary costs and manufacturing fees.
The problem is and has always been that it’s only economical to produce
these boards in batches larger than one. Whereas on the iPad unit it
might take me two hours to build, test and package an assembly by hand
(since I don’t have stencils), this one easily took six or more when all
was said and done, not counting testing time. There’s no price I can
reasonably charge to make it worth my while to spend six or eight hours
pushing solder paste around with a toothpick. This is of course not a
problem if I have a solder stencil, but for the very small pitch of some
of the pads on these boards, I can’t use a cut-rate stencil fab and need
to purchase a professional framed stencil, which usually cost upwards of
$100 and can approach $200. So I need to sell “a few” boards in order
for the cost to be properly amortized across each, to avoid having to
charge each person an arm and a leg. Right now that number is around ten
or fifteen, and I don’t have that many interested parties.
Find some friends and we’ll talk
Reply ↓
4. Max 2013-11-10 at 00:46
Would OSH Stencils be an option for this?
http://www.oshstencils.com/
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2013-11-10 at 20:33
Huh, I hadn’t heard of OSH Stencils, thanks! Unfortunately, these boards
typically cannot use a Kapton or Mylar stencil, because the webs on some
of the required connectors’ footprints are so narrow that the laser
cutting the material typically just melts it – or even if not, all the
tiny threads of material would likely tear on first use. I’ll drop them
a line and see what they say, but I wouldn’t hold your breath…
Reply ↓
1. OSH Stencils 2013-11-13 at 19:42
Feel free to give us a try Mike, I think you’ll be surprised at the
precision we can attain. We have a very different process for our
Kapton stencils compared to what you may be used to. Shoot me an
e-mail if you have any questions.
One of our customers recently posted this, for reference.
http://imgur.com/dIHKSOK,KQMr1QV#0 These are .2mm apertures, and .5mm
spacing between them. If you click the second image (a competitor
product) you can see a very clear difference. We do a lot of ultra
fine pitch work, and have had great results. If this isn’t
sufficient, hang tight, we’re going to announce some new material
options by the end of the year that may suit your needs if our Kapton
solutions aren’t a fit.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2013-11-14 at 18:50
Hey, thanks for the input. Those apertures do look very sharp, but
they appear to be rounded as if they are made with a single laser
kerf, is 0.2mm the smallest that can be cut?
For comparison’s sake, my Simple iPad board uses 0.28×2.40mm
apertures on 0.50mm pitch (web thickness 0.22mm) and my Macbook
board uses 0.20×1.20mm apertures on 0.40mm pitch (web thickness
0.20mm). It looks like you can cut the apertures, but what I’ve
been told by other vendors is that it is unreliable to cut with
such small webs since the laser tends to melt the material, is
that not a factor with your process?
I guess what I really want, not just from OSH Stencils but from
all stencil vendors, is minimum aperture dimensions and minimum
recommended web thickness for the material and process used. It’s
so hard to get that kind of information out of vendors – I
understand it’s hard to give an accurate number due to some
dependence on the web length and surrounding geometry, but it’s so
hard to get a good feel for what’s feasible and what isn’t!
Reply ↓
1. OSH Stencils 2013-11-17 at 20:03
The rounding is the users design, not an attribute of the
laser. We cut exactly what is sent to us. This customer just
happened to design his board with rounded edges on his ICs and
all his pads.
I understand the frustration with vendors giving exact specs,
and that’s largely attributed to the inconsistent nature of how
they handle their cutting. I don’t have exact specs to release
either, but that’s because I haven’t sat down and made the
effort in determining the true capabilities, but we haven’t had
a single design to date (knock on virtual wood) that we haven’t
been able to cut to meet a customers needs.
If you want to give our stencils a try, feel free. If you are
unhappy with the results, we’ll make it right to your
satisfaction.
2. mike Post author2013-11-18 at 09:28
I may just take you up on that, as soon as I get some time to
prepare the files
5. Mark N 2014-02-19 at 16:21
Can the camera breakout board be use with almost all old and new macbook
displays or just the new ones like the 2011- 2013 models ?
Reply ↓
6. mike Post author2014-02-21 at 02:38
Electrically, the camera breakout will work for any of the recent Macbook
cameras, since they have had a USB interface for at least the last few
generations. However, Apple has a bad habit of changing connectors from one
model to the next, so it’s quite likely that the board may be mechanically
incompatible. Is there a particular camera model you’re interested in? I
have some docs on Apple hardware that might give us a better idea.
Reply ↓
1. Mark N 2014-02-22 at 18:57
i was thinking the 2011 or 2012 model. the imac camera also interested
me but have a different connector , wonder if its have the same pinouts
tho
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-02-27 at 12:33
Sorry about the delay. I will try to look into this tonight.
Reply ↓
1. Mark N 2014-03-02 at 17:49
no worries , take your time
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-03-05 at 02:09
Hm. As it turns out, I’ve only got information on units made
before 2010. If you can find a high-res photo of one you’re
planning to use, it might be possible to make an educated guess
one way or the other based on that. Otherwise, sorry I can’t
confirm anything for you
2. Mark N 2014-03-06 at 16:21
i couldn’t find any of the newest models or the 2012 models, even ho
i thought i saw one last week, just cant seem to find it anymore.
Reply ↓
7. srs 2014-02-26 at 21:53
Great job!
If you would ever consider taking orders for the board, count me in!
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-02-27 at 12:34
Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind
Reply ↓
1. srs 2014-02-28 at 12:46
Please do. I’ve perfectly good panel laying around, gathering dust
but lack the skills and tools to assemble the board myself. Those QFN
packages are just beyond me.
There is one other option that comes to my mind: I don’t suppose that
you take requests, but would it be possible for you to put together
OSH-Park-compliant design of a board with only the DP pass-trough in
place and inputs for external power supply (with optionally some
feedback to the PS, that there is in fact something connected to the
DP)? That way I could try going crazy with some less portable, but
doable PS design. With my luck, I’m afraid that I would struggle with
the design for quite few iterations before I get something done
without breaking any rules. Not to mention that the wait alone would
probably kill me ;). I hope, I could manage soldering the sockets in
place, if not for the first time I would have 3 tries in a price of
1.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-03-02 at 01:42
I’ve had several requests for a simpler board for the Macbook
recently. It might be time to consider designing one of those…
I’ll add it to my to-do list, but I can’t tell you when I might
get around to it – there are quite a few projects in line ahead of
it at the moment.
Reply ↓
1. srs 2014-03-02 at 07:11
No pressure. Whatever you come up with: be it simpler* board or
one that I could order from you directly I’ll take it. Once
again: great work and I see that saying that you should keep it
up is really pointless because you are just like that Energizer
rabbit.
*something not requiring an oven to bake
2. mike Post author2014-03-02 at 09:52
On “not baking”… That’s tough, because the Macbook mating
connectors are just such fine pitch (0.4mm) that it’s difficult
to hand-solder them. It can be done, but you’ll need a
magnifying lamp, tiny solder, a very fine iron tip and a steady
hand. I find it easier to reflow process them, because if you
screw up paste application, you can just wipe it off and do it
again, no permanent damage. But if you hand-solder a bridge in
between those pins, getting it out can be a very frustrating
process.
8. abl 2014-03-06 at 03:49
Nice work! Count me in as a very interested customer for a board or two.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-03-09 at 21:42
Will do The numbers are starting to add up…
Reply ↓
9. Peter 2014-03-11 at 03:21
Why don’t you start a kickstarter for this? You would definitely receive
the funding you need to get it started!
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-03-11 at 18:01
Eh, Kickstarter. The problem with Kickstarter is that it pushes this
stuff from ‘hobby’ to ‘second job’. Well-run Kickstarter campaigns need
set schedules, regular updates, timely communication. I can’t guarantee
some of those things without devoting more time per day to the project
than I really want to (or can).
It’s never been a problem of funding… money just can’t buy free time.
Well, it could if I quit my day job, but I don’t think I want to gamble
on that!
Reply ↓
10. Massimiliano 2014-03-27 at 03:37
Hello,
Please, let me know if you decide to make some PCB for sale.
I may be interested in purchasing one.
Actually, I would be interested in interfacing a 13” retina display
(LP133WQ1-SJA1).
Do you think it’s easy to make changes to the electronic components of
PCB10006REVB
for achieve the purpose? I think that the two panels differ only for the
LED load.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-03-31 at 12:12
I haven’t looked into working with the 13″ yet, but they are quite
similar so it should be trivial to do so. But don’t quote me on that, I
haven’t actually looked into the nitty-gritty of it all – and Apple
loves to kill cross-compatibility by changing pinouts between products.
I think I’ve got a specification document on that panel, so let me dig
into it a little deeper.
Reply ↓
11. Swieter 2014-04-02 at 09:17
Thank you for these posts and inspiring the reverse engineering of this. I
was just thinking about such and adapter board but I see you and a couple
others have already created them. I’ve enjoyed the read through your
stories.
Do you know, would the adapter board work on a MacBook Pro Retina to drive
an external display at 1920*1200? The MBPr spec states external displays at
up to 2560 by 1600. Being the external display is physically 2880 * 1800, I
wasn’t sure if this would be a problem. Boy I’ve been dreaming of small,
high resolution external displays and I may finally have a solution.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-04-02 at 10:19
I actually don’t know… I don’t have a MacBook to test it with. The board
itself doesn’t mangle the signal at all, it’s just a passthrough – and
as such should support a practically infinite resolution. But whether
the MacBook GPU hardware can handle it, I don’t know, sorry!
Reply ↓
1. Swieter 2014-04-02 at 20:56
Thank you Mike for the response. I see how the board is just passing
the signals through. So perhaps my question is more generic and along
the lines of what happens with a high resolution display, one with
more hardware pixels than can be output by the laptop, is connected
to the laptop. I imagine it will work at the lower resolutions, but
it has been a while since I’ve done this. On to googling, this is
basic enough question, thanks for helping rephrase the question and
the inspiration from your work.
Reply ↓
12. Massimiliano 2014-04-04 at 02:55
Hello,
I found this HDPI LG panel: LP129QE1-SPA1.
It is used on the ‘chromebook’ device. It is a 12.9” display with a
resolution of 2560×700.
It found my interest because the datasheet can be easily found on the WWW
and it is very cheap compared to the 13” Macbook Retina.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-04-04 at 11:42
I actually have one of those panels – t’s been on my ‘to-do’ list to
build up a board for it for six months or more. Personally it’s a lot
more interesting to me than all the other high-res panels because a)
it’s a more reasonable size to do real work on than the tiny iPad panels
and b) it can be found outside of full laptop lid assemblies unlike the
Macbook panels. One of these days I swear I’ll get to it…
Reply ↓
1. Max 2014-04-05 at 00:11
I only read the topic on overclock.net and got panic, seeing you
hadn’t wrote there since last year! O.o
But it seems you are still breathing and building epic things, so
please, please, please keep that Chromebook Pixel display in mind. I
don’t know why, on 42 fu***** sites, noone seems to be interested in
that epic piece of technology. :`(
I would order one or more of them today if you told you could build
drivers (and ship them to Germany :D) in less than a month. Thank you
for efforts from all, who don’t understand anything of PWM, eDP,
LVDS, HDCP, DPCP and those other fancy words I now have read until
7am O.o The topic is just too exciting….
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-04-09 at 12:05
Oops, I’d all but forgotten about that thread. Time for a visit…
Yeah, it’s high time I build up a controller for the Pixel panel.
They’re even down to the cost of the iPad panels on eBay – and so
much better, in my opinion. Now if only I had the free time…
Reply ↓
1. Tim Vraks 2014-07-19 at 12:03
Shouldn’t be all to hard. If you took a PC motherboard like the
Asus Q87T, then all you would need on an intermediate board
would be a Freescale MC34844A, and you could include a
connector for both the Pixel LCD and the 15″ Retina. The
motherboard produces 12v or 19v DC for the MC34844A and even
provides a PWM Signal directly from the ACPI (OS). I’m in the
process of designing some boards.
2. Tshen2 2014-08-28 at 07:31
Hi!
I’ve actually already built a controller for the Chromebook Pixel
panel. It looks great! I’m going to have to document it at some
point..
Reply ↓
1. TheFreeman 2014-09-30 at 21:25
Please! No one has documented how yet but plenty have tried and
given up. You’d be doing everyone a big service.
2. srs 2014-04-06 at 06:35
Looks interesting despite the odd AR. Just hope that it’s not one of
those pentile-like “miracle” panels. I’ve spent some time evaluating
image quality on a notebook equipped with the LTN133YL01-L01 (13.3″
3200×1800) and trust me it is dreadful. Apart from the color
representation issues, which I don’t usually pay much attention to,
the resolution spec. is just a nasty hoax played on the retina-crazed
people. Just try displaying some white text on blue background or
vice versa and you immediately start to wonder: “where half of my
pixels have gone?”
I work mostly with displaying tons of text (don’t really care for
font quality as far as it’s readable: source code mostly) and I think
that apple just hit the right spot with their 2880×1800@15.6″.
Anything more dense makes me just go pixel-blind and I start to scale
the fonts. It appears to me that the next usable and worthwhile
solution would be some 4k panel in a 17-19″ realm. Anything above
(DPI-wise) just seems plain waste of (pixel)ammo.
Saying all this: hey Mike get your act together and start taking
orders for the MBPR board ;).
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-04-09 at 12:10
Pentile on a notebook? Ick. Hey, that’s not the panel from the
Samsung Ativ Book 9, is it? I was really excited to hear about
that when it was announced, and I haven’t heard anything since.
I need to fix/finish the firmware before I will feel ready to
release the MPBr board. And to do that I need to learn some major
ARM programming. Unless you happen to know a programmer with too
much time on their hands…
Reply ↓
1. srs 2014-04-09 at 17:05
Yep. I afraid that it’s all over the place: Samsung, Lenovo,
Eurocom, Clevo all have models build around this panel. One can
hope that it’ll drive the cost down, but than again I’m not
quite sure it’s worth it. I mean: it’s ok (works as advertised
@3200×1800) when you display monochrome text on it. But the
things go south really quickly when you start to employ
something as cutting edge as syntax highlighting for instance
;).
Either way the DPI is bit too much for me to use it
comfortably. Maybe for viewing images it would be fine (lower
spatial frequencies) but for (colored or not) text it’s just
unusable.
As for the programming part: if it’s got a C compiler I could
give it a try. I’m afraid that I don’t know much about ARM
assembly, but I did a fair amount of 8051 and x86 asm
programming back in the day. But it’s just talk the talk, as
I’m not capable of building the board on my own and I can’t
even start to imagine how to remote debug this sort of stuff.
Being like da Vinci is not as easy as it used to be I suppose.
13. Vinnyb 2014-04-12 at 19:32
Hi Mike, any of the Retina boards for sale? Would need one.
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-04-13 at 12:47
Not yet… but there has been an awful lot of interest lately. Maybe a
link got posted somewhere. In any case, it’s climbing higher on my
priority list by the day, but it’s not quite at the top yet. You’ll have
to be patient a little while longer, sorry!
Reply ↓
14. Kristian B 2014-05-14 at 10:43
Hi Mike, it’s very interesting to read about your work. I’m also interested
in 3 or 4 of the MBP Retina boards if you should ever sell them.
Best regards Kristian
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-05-20 at 07:22
Thanks! I do think I’ll eventually end up making some boards to sell,
but probably not in the immediate future.
Reply ↓
15. Brian 2014-06-11 at 11:30
Hey – Did you ever try setting the refresh rate above 60hz?
Reply ↓
16. Edel 2014-06-23 at 17:31
ok i am going to go out on a limb here would anyone know where i can get a
controller board for LP173WF2-TPB2 i have a broken m17xr3 and would like to
make the LCD an external montior and noone and i mean noone has the
controller board for this model which i find really interesting being that
its a couple of years old already..and some people advertise that they have
universal ones but before i buy one i would like to make sure.
Reply ↓
1. Brian 2014-06-24 at 20:00
I also want a small 120hz screen for my gaming machine (a) for
portability/taking it to LAN parties and (b) because I have tunnel
vision and don’t really benefit from larger screens. I know Mike had
started looking at the -TPA1 version of this panel a while back – he was
going to use it with the MBP retina controller but had some trouble with
the cabling. I wonder if he’s had a chance to look at it since then.
Reply ↓
17. Buco 2014-07-22 at 10:44
Very nice project. Please don’t stop. You are very good at this I
absolutely admire people with such skills and joy at their hobby.
Do you think it is possible to modify the circuits of a non retina Macbook
to run a retina Panel?
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-07-25 at 12:00
It depends. A lot of the older Macbook non-Retinas used LVDS instead of
DisplayPort to drive their displays; if this is the case, then it is
non-trivial or impossible (depending on configuration) to convert one to
the other. I’d have to do a little digging to give you a more concrete
answer.
Reply ↓
18. Kristian B 2014-08-13 at 14:11
Hi mike, a bit offtopic, do you know if the keyboard/trackpad from a
macbook pro retina can be modded to usb?
Regards Kristian
Reply ↓
1. Tim Vrakas 2014-11-14 at 22:25
@Kristian! Yay! Trackpads and keyboards! I’m working on that right now,
I have some breakout boards designed. I can send you what I have if
you’re interested.
Tim
Reply ↓
19. Massimiliano 2014-08-23 at 09:57
Hello Mike,
I’ve already ordered almost all components. However, I am not sure about
the crystal/oscillator to buy.
Please, may you provide me with the parameters of Y1 that you used. In
particular
I miss the load capacitance.
Thanks,
Massimiliano.
Reply ↓
20. Bill 2014-10-06 at 23:25
I know this an old thread, but any chance you could add an outline to the
“STENCIL” files quick??
OSH Stencils prefers an outline for the stencils. Not a requirement, but
wanted to give them a go and not sure of the consequences of not having an
outline . . .
Thanks and best of luck on the house and lab!
Bill
Reply ↓
21. JB 2014-10-26 at 00:01
Hi Mike,
This is a awesome and inspiring project! I’ve learned much, and have been
inspired to learn more.
I don’t quite think I’m able to build my own yet, but I’m not adverse to
trying!
Thank you!
If you ever do get around to building a batch of these for sale, please let
me know. I would buy 3 to 6 of them. (I have a project in mind!)
Regards,
Joe
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2014-10-28 at 13:00
Thanks, will do!
Reply ↓
22. Jaro 2015-07-06 at 09:21
If you ever sell the board, Im interested in buying one
Please notify me
Reply ↓
1. mike Post author2015-07-09 at 22:37
Will do
Reply ↓
23. Arnold 2015-09-22 at 12:46
Very nice!
Thanks for this info.
I want a 16:10 monitor for my diy laptop, having a modern beautiful
display, with cam in it, is gonna be awesome.
If you do happen to sell a controller board, hit me up.
Reply ↓
24. tom de with 2016-06-03 at 05:22
Hallo Mike,
impressive work!
By accident I purchased an LG lcd for my macbook pro (mat screen so non
retina)
After my screen didn’t want to lit up anymore, I had my laptop checked in
an official apple repair center.
They could restore it for 700€. I chose to restore it my self, ordered a
screen online and recovered my laptop from the repair shop. I come home,
start up the engine, and, quite amazing, the screens functioned as before…
So now I have this new lcd, and if your board for the retina is compatible
and available I ‘d like to order one.
If not I might experiment to assemble the board, enthousiasted by your work
and posts.
Well done!
tom de with
brussels
Reply ↓
25. Mike 2016-08-12 at 10:32
What I’d really like is to do is use an MBP Retina Display as an External
Monitor via mDP/ DP . HDMI is a bonus.
Besides the board you designed and I can send those files for a Fab, what
other parts would I need?
I do not mind scrounging the Fleabay for the pieces and Soldering them on
the board.
Is your design capable of this? PS: I was wondering why there is talk of
USB cable (for power??) and Camera (what does it have to do with DP)?
Sorry, I was reading and just got lost. I wouldn’t mind the effort in
assembling/ soldering the pieces together as long as I can get clear on
what pieces are needed – Item list.
Reply ↓
26. Mike 2016-08-12 at 10:38
I just downloaded the last 3 linked files. Would that be enough to save?
Reply ↓
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