Olimex TERES I Modular DIY Laptop

Olimex’s Bulgarian hackers have been working on the open source design of the laptop on the Allwinner A64 processor for over a year - and finally completed this unique project . From February 2017, the company begins to take orders for sets to build a laptop for 225 euros .

The open design allows you to add the necessary modules to your laptop: GPS, GSM or something more exotic, change the design to your taste. The case is included in the package, although it can be printed out on a 3D printer using a published CAD model.

The user manual explains that the laptop is not sold ready-made. Send only assembly kits.
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The list of parts (with the name of the part on the item) see below. Details are listed in the order in which they appear in the assembly instructions:

• TERES-006-Keyboard - QWERTY keyboard.
  
  
• TERES-023-Touch - touchpad with cover TERES-022-Touch-Cover and buttons TERES-010-Touch-Btns. The touchpad should be attached very carefully, connector up, that is, so that he looked in the opposite direction from the touchpad board.
  
  
• TERES-014-Screw-Set - a set of screws (42 pieces of four types: four pieces M2 × 1.5 mm, nine M2 × 3 mm, 17 pieces M2 × 4 mm, 12 pieces M2 × 5 mm).
  
  
• TERES-PCB3-Touch - touchpad board.
  
  
• TERES-PCB2-IO is a board with a headphone jack, microSD and USB connectors.
  
  
• TERES-PCB4-Btn is the board for the power button along with a plastic button.
  
  
• TERES-009-Pwr-Btn and shrink sink TERES-013-LED-pipe.
  
  
• TERES-PCB1-A64 is a motherboard on the Allwinner A64 processor. It should be handled with extreme care, not bending, not dropping. It is very sensitive to static electricity. The TERES-PCB2-IO I / O board is attached to TERES-PCB1-A64 with a TERES-027-FPC-IO-Main cable. The 40-pin cable is exactly sized for the distance between the boards. It extends through the entire body of the laptop, almost without bending and not taking up extra space. To connect the other boards are more miniature cables TERES-028-FPC-Pwr-Main and TERES-029-FPC-Touch-Btn. It will not be so easy to connect the touchscreen fee - the cable will need to be bent at a right angle twice, and then it will definitely fit along a predetermined trajectory.
  
  
• TERES-PCB5-KEYBOARD - keyboard control board (bevelled board in the center in the photo above) is connected to the touchpad board with the TERES-031-FPC-Kbd-Btn cable.
  
  
• Parts for assembling a display with a lid: TERES-008-LCD-Back, TERES-016-Hinge-Set, TERES-007-LCD-Frame and the TERES-015-LCD 11.6 ″ LCD panel itself. There will have to tinker with attaching hinges TERES-016-Hinge-Set, they will take eight screws. To attach the LCD panel itself to the cover - four screws.
  
  
• Details TERES-019-Camera and TERES-020-Camera-Lens can not be attached if you do not need a camera (by the way, the same applies to other optional modules such as touchpad, speakers and built-in WiFi antenna).
  
  
• The TERES-025-WiFi-Antenna antenna is laid along the display lid.
  
  
• Speakers, battery, stickers, dust collectors.

Putting these parts together is a snap - it’s even a pleasant process. The instruction is very clear, so your son or daughter (or you yourself) at the end will be able to say with pride that you have collected a laptop with your own hands!



If everything turned out well, the computer will have the following configuration:

• SoC - Allwinner A64 with ARM Cortex-A53 quad-core processor at 1.2 GHz with Mali-400MP2 graphics processor
• System Memory - 1 GB DDR3L
• Drive - 4 GB eMMC Flash, microSD slot
• Display - 11.6 ″ with a resolution of 1366 × 768 pixels
• Video - mini HDMI 1.4 connector
• Sound - via mini HDMI, 3.5 mm audio jack, two speakers, microphone
• Connectivity - 802.11 b / g / n WiFi up to 150 Mbps, Bluetooth 4.0 LE
• USB - two USB ports
• Front-camera
• Keyboard QWERTY + two-button touchpad
• 7000 mAh battery
• Weight - 980 g

A very nice laptop, they used to be called netbooks. Naturally, it is more logical to install Linux on a free laptop, although you can just Android (on the Linux kernel). Images for recording on a flash card are on Github , like other necessary software of this free laptop. There are also CAD models of boards, buttons and other components , if you want to make them yourself.



If something is broken in the laptop, you can make each piece yourself or buy it separately . for example, in a couple of years, you can change the motherboard with a more powerful processor. Or buy a black and white screen if you work only with text (the eyes get tired of the color screen more than the black and white).

For modern games, such a laptop is hardly suitable, but for normal operation, without fear of hardware bookmarks and software bugs in BIOS firmware, like proprietary manufacturers, is ideal. Maybe this is the model that Edward Snowden has already ordered. Or not, because his beloved Tails on this hardware will not fly .

Note. The Teres I laptop was named after the Thracian king Teres, the legendary first king of the Odrissa kingdom, who united 40 or more Thracian tribes. In the territory of Thrace now is the city of Plovdiv, where the creators of the laptop live. A picture of Teresa's golden death mask is attached to the user manual.