@Spycke yeah, that’s me from SFF Network forums. I had put my project on hold for a while, but this thread helped flare up my interest again and I will make my own build log thread here once I have something more tangible and concrete. The EDP approach is possible, because the battery won’t cover up the port. But I’m sticking to what works more easily for me which is the HDMI cable with expansion card.
All I have right now is a loose stack of computer parts with a USB hub. No case or any frame built to hold the stuff together, just a proof of concept that you can fit necessary parts in handheld form factor.
If the Phawx can influence the FW team to make their own handheld that would be awesome as well! He has just about every major handheld PC, even a prototype of the cancelled Smach Z lol
Yeah hopefully the framework team can have a bit of ressources on such a project, fitting works, they could probably get a nicer display than us , and make daughter boards for the controls. THat would be the ultimate form of an handheld for me : dockable, upgradable with great warranty support
Let’s see if we can sudo make one to appeal to them or a third party ? (in fusion it should be enough, as a proof of concept)
I hope this kind of device is what Framework is looking towards releasing next, after the FW16.
You add to that the possibility of adding a keyboard and pad to create a 2 in 1 tablet/small laptop and you have a very versatile device that can appeal to different kind of people.
You want a reparable upgradable handheld, that is it. You don’t game or are not interested in handhelds, but want a x86 tablet, that is it. You want a small ultra portable laptop or 2 in 1, that is it.
Plus it opens up Framework to the controllers market, which is yearning for an easy to repair option. Most people will not know, but most controllers are discarded because one of the joysticks and, less often, one of the buttons starts to slightly malfunction, but the rest of the controller is fine. Having the option to easily substitute the malfunctioning part, would have a great appeal to gamers.
I find the ideal screen size to be 7" to 8" though that would add a lot of bezel to the left and right. It’s all due to the dimensions of the mainboard. It’s not a square-ish “half-size” form factor like many of the handheld PCBs are. Which is also why the FW battery in the tablet needs to be stacked on top in order for it to fit in the case.
I have found this modular gaming handheld that uses a Framework board, and it looks promising. But it does illustrate what I was trying to point out with having bigger bezels on the left and right.
You’d have to use a screen much larger than 7" to take up the extra room. Although that’s also a matter of taste.
If you want the controller right over the bezel area, that is possible. Then you just have to make the design choice that they’ll not be detachable because they have to be on the same area as the sides of the mainboard.
I have more parts to test with and have begun to 3D print a custom case for my handheld design. It’s not a horizontal Steam Deck style case. Instead, it will be a mini laptop/clamshell format not unlike GPD Win Max 2 where game pad controls are added towards the back. I’ll eventually make my own thread for this project as I do more work and I can provide pictures.
I’ll throw my hat into the ring on this one. I’ve got a housing/design for something like this over here. I modeled this using the official mainboard and battery CAD, and printed it all out as a prototype, which all fit together really nicely, in a sub 300mm width package excluding any controller dimensions. I don’t think I could narrow or slim down the design any further, since going any thinner would probably result in really poor thermals, and reducing the width would either structurally compromise it or result in a loss of features like the WiFi module. I suppose you could reduce the height, but that would start causing issues with installing the display and how the front housing attaches to the rear housing. Some have mentioned that JoyCons are a poor choice, but without designing a custom PCB or using some kind of Arduino (both of which I have limited or no experience with), they’re really the best option I can think of currently.
Very interesting, i dig the gpd win a lot, but on the fence with upgradability, hopefully oculinkc an be added too ? The hardest thing is to source a good display
Though honestly i kinda want the new steam deck OLED panel now
I am personnally looking to build something using an oculink connector (desktop replacement handheld) , using a storage expansion card from framework and external storage on a dock + charging when docked
Nonetheless i am super happy to see to see a lot of handheld project using the framework mobo !
I ordered a Magedok 10" display and just received it today. Testing it out with a USB-C hub with HDMI out (and I’m sure it would work with the expansion card too), and it works and looks fine. It’s not OLED but IPS, and I got it at a discount, and for what I paid the display is great, with no strong variation or leakage of backlight brightness viewing it from the front.
Used one of the cheap mini USB 2.0 hub boards, soldered with a cable to a USB-C connector for power, so I am able to power this 10 inch display directly from the mainboard.
It is a 2560x1600 display (more than my desktop monitor!) so integer scaling with 1280x800 is possible but I prefer to keep it at 1440x900- it feels like the sweet spot for this size and hardware.
Another possibility with the monitor is a dock-style gamepad/computer where you can slot in the monitor and connect video and USB from one side. It would still be a bit bulky, but would be more elegant than having a screen with huge bezel.
Agreed, outside of the steam deck, they would have by far the most repairable handheld if they went this route…especially if they worked with Valve on SteamOS compatibility. I would personally work with the ChimeraOS team to get their SteamOS-like distro working on there well too.
Wanted to give a small update that I have been doing tests for a possible handheld with the mainboard. Originally I was going to have the FW battery stacked above the board, but @CJ_Elevated cautioned against this for safety reasons. So I have made a custom USB-C battery bank using a IC2368 power/charging controller with 4 Lithium-Ion cylindrical batteries. It does the job fine and what makes this especially nice is that physical configuration of the batteries is more flexible.
Dude. I am about to try to do the exact same thing for my project. Can you please provide more details about what you did? This is to say, I’m either going to create a built-in battery bank in my device or I’m going to reconfigure the stock battery’s BMS and cells to hold more watt hours. I think that the former might be easier, though.
I went with the recommendation for the IC2368 through GreatScott! demonstrating how to build a custom bank with it, and also seeing it brought up in some battery related subreddits. So followed the wiring from GreatScott who also did some testing and theory with the datasheet, which helped speed up understanding the process.
I still checked the resistor values of the board I received to make sure that it is configured to my needs (4S Li-Ion and 5A charging mode). A 4S balancer board is required first to group the batteries. Following the video I connect the 4S positive end of the battery bank and P- of the balance board to the positive and negative terminals of the IC2368 board respectively. A big limitation of this board is there is only one port for both input and output so pass-through charging is not possible.
@ccRicers It sounds like you and I have gone through a nearly identical process.
My IP2368 board arrives tomorrow along with a bench power supply. The load tester will be here in a couple of weeks as well.
Although at this point I’m also going to try to just re-cell the stock 55whr to something around 100whr and reprogram the OEM bms using TI’s software. I also need to dig into the EC code more to see if I need to alter the charging behavior of the laptop that way to make sure things don’t go boom.
Thanks for your reply, and good luck with your project!
Anyone here think we can get first or third-party JoyCons connected via wired JoyCon rails? I found a reliable AliExpress listing selling a pair for less than $10, and if we could get connectors for the ribbon cables to slide into, perhaps we could get a wired connection that would work even in Airplane Mode.
Worth a look? Recently found someone else on another Discord channel post their handheld creation. I like how more people are creating their own versions of a Framework handheld. The use of mech key PCBs is also cool.
I don’t have the patience to record or edit videos like this guy does, though, and this looks like a great result.
