Aspire One 8.9" Tablet PC Mod

Hello all,

I want to share you the making of the tablet PC mod for Acer Aspire One. I bought my Aspire One a while ago. I visit this website from time to time. I wanted to do the touchscreen mod for my Aspire One. I found the 8.9" screen and typing a pain in the a**. It is very tiny and the viewing distance will make things even smaller. I searched the net and found different projects that dealt with combining a custom case and touchscreen. I decided to order a touchscreen from http://www.fidohub.com. It is pretty expensive. Then I measured the inside of the aspire one and got custom dimension plexiglass pieces. I bought a Dremel 4000XBR rotary tool with one extra vertical attachment for drilling in the plexiglass. I spent about 2 months working only 1-3 hours a night maybe 4 times a week. The result is pretty impressive for a guy that never did any work with rotary tools or working with plexiglass. I took a lot of research to start the project as I did not want to redo things since my time was very limited.

Some of the things I used to make my custom Tablet PC Mod:

- Aspire One 8.9" guts
- 2 - 0.5" thick custom cut plexiglass piece
- 1 - 1/8" thick custom cut plexiglass piece (this one was used in between two bigger plexiglass pieces)
- Dremel 4000XBR rotary tool with extra attachment( I was able to adjust the depth of drilling etc) to drill inside of plexiglass
- I only used 2 custom drills that are used to get the inside of plexiglass out
- FidoHub usb solderless touchscreen for aspire one (8.9")
- Canary Yellow all purpose spray paint
- Cordless drill and few drills ( for vent holes)
- 4 screws with sleeve nuts to hold pieces together ( 4 corners )
- Weld-on #4 for plexiglass bonding (only bonds smooth plexiglass together )
- Glue cement for other glue

At the end I was able to get everything working in my tablet including webcam, microphone and speakers Webcam module even has a protective piece of plastic to keep it from getting dust

I have to say everything was a tight fit. In order to fit more stuff inside I would have to cut a lot of wires short since they are pretty long ( touchscreen module wires).

I carved inside the thick plexiglass with dremel tool and its awsome vertical attachment.

I designed to case to take any custom battery but in order to swith batteries I would have to open the case up and the locking mechanisms for the battery are internal for the case. I do not mind as I might buy extended battery and pretty much you not take out the battery that much if at all.

I had to remove the holder for HDD as it was too thick to fit in.

I flipped the screen so that battery compartment is at the bottom. The reason for doing this is easy : gravity ( I think lol ). With more weight at the bottom it is easier to hold.

To hold the motherboard etc I used the orignal screws from the case and I ripped out those little nuts that look like stars that have thread in them for the screws. As a result the old case is pretty much unusable so I had to make sure this project will work out

I was able to get pretty close to 2 hours ( 1:55 hours ) with touchscreen and wireless on while web surfing which I think is pretty impressive for almost a year old 3-cell battery.

I drilled some vent holes for Fan and its exhaust, RAM vents and HDD vents. Event after 2 hours of use the thing does not get hot. I thing it gets less hot than the original case.

The touchscreen worked 100% even after putting in on/off while desigind the case . Very accurate and I guess low power consumption.

I installed Touch-it virtual keyboard that gives you different skins for keyboard including a cool 2 thumbs keyboard.

I use it mostly to surf the net and I can keep it closer to my eyes to see better.

My craftsmanship (if you can even say that lol...) is not great since I never dealt with stuff like these.

I am including few pictures to show you my end product. I made a view short clips of it in use but I have to put them together. The whole tablet is exaclty the size of the original case and 1 and 1/8 of inch thick wich I is thinner than the original case.

I hope you enjoyed reading my post.

LV44

 

hmmm, cool. Kinda not perfect but too cool to really care about that

great job

 

Looks nice.
That must have taken some hard work mate.

 

Awesome job, well done.

 

OMG someone actually did it!
I've had this idea for quite awhile (but my idea was to develop a way to swivel the screen and lay it flat like a normal tablet pc), but had no idea on how to tackle it. This is quite an inspiration to say the least.

But this concept is just so perfect if you think about it. You have managed to create an slimline netbook tablet for way cheaper than a normal tablet would be sold for, as well as you have cut down on the AAO's size, and the idea for a netbook is almost the same as a tablet in which portability overcomes power so just using the screen is ideal; plus if you ever needed to you could purchase an external keyboard and mouse.

Way props! :mrgreen:

PS: Do you think you can show a picture for the battery cavity of the case to see how you approached that?

 

Hey arexxk,

The battery is removable (BUT you have to open up the case to release 2 plastic locks that I made to hold battery in place). The sides that hold battery have 2 rails just like the original case. Took me a while to carve them as they had to be pretty accurate to match battery sides and input in the motherboard.

Btw, I just ordered a 1Gig RAM stick (about $20 shipped) and UM0874 7200mAh Replacement Lithium Battery Pack for Acer Aspire one A110/A150( $50.78 + free shipping!!! )

I know the battery will stick out a little bit at the end and will make this Tablet thicker but I rather have thicker Tablet with 6-7hrs of battery life than about 2 hrs

I was also thinking of SSD harddrive or CF card and CF to Sata adapter. I might do that later. If I get a small adapter I might be able to use extra usb ports on the touchscreen hub for like bluetooth adapter or gps adapter or even tv tuner

 

ooo nice, ya battery life is the greatest down fall to the stock aao. I would say bluetooth, 3G, and GPS are great upgrades, but im not sure about the tv tuner. You should take a look at orb, its a free application that allows you to stream your television from your pc with a tv tuner at home through the internet, pretty sweet and even works on the iphone.

But i really like your tablet layout, but i was thinking of making out of WOOD. aha kind of a polished look like this:
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=14492
but in your tablet form

 

I never worked with plexiglass in my life the same as with wood. I think wooden case should be possible. I had only like 3 tools to use and that is why the case might look imperfect. I planned a lot before attempting to do something. I tried not to use too much glue on tiny parts to not worry about them breaking. I traced the shape of the motherboard on the paper. I put it on the plexiglass and started carving out the middle leaving little pillars for the special tiny threaded nuts from the case. I figured the best way to mount it was to use the same screws with the same nuts. The hardest part was the battery. I tried to keep the same slide in/out. If You are going to make the case I can answer your questions about my experience.

I tried to keep the case as small as possible to decrease the size ( actually only thickness by just a little bit ) but I can tell you with regular HDD my case is pretty tight. The reason why the cables are pretty long and I did not want to carve out too much so the case would be too thin and break easly. If I take out regular HDD and put like SSD or some kind of CF to SATA adapter I can put more stuff in. Another thing to do is to cut and reconnect the wires as they take all the exta space since they are pretty long.

When I upgrade the ram and battery I will post the pictures of inside. I can tell you it might be pretty messy

 

Hello all,

I completed my upgrade throughout last few weeks .

I currently run Windows Vista Ultimate x86 SP2 on my Acer Aspire One with 1.5Gig of RAM. The battery I got gives me 6-7 hours of runtime which is HUGE improvement over the stock 3-cell battery. I took some pictures that I will post later. I ran into few problems that I think I solved already. One of the problems was that the touchscreen wire strip (from LCD to touchscreen controller) was touching some things on motherboard and I would get some random behavior where i would not be able to power on etc. I also got to a point where I had to do a BIOS recovery.

Vista install was pretty easy. I installed wireless drivers (used the latest XP drivers from Acer site). Then I did windows update and all other drivers where also installed. I did not get chance to test camera and mic but I am pretty sure they will work as there are no missing things in Device Manager.

I think Vista runs faster than XP

Vista recognized my touchscreen automatically. It used its own VISTA drivers to control it. Everything would be fine except that I could not do a right-click on the bottom taskbar and every time the screen gets rotated the touch input would not. I installed the drivers for the touchscreen and everything works fine now except ONE thing that I do not understand.

Does any one have solution to this problem? (Read below)

I have Vista Ultimtate SP2 (+ IE8) with all latest updates. I installed Avira AntiVir and Touchscreen driver + software for FidoHub usb touchscreen controller. I think after installing the touchscreen driver the Vista gives me a black screen on every restart. The power light is on but there is no HDD activity LED or battery LED light. I can hear the fan spin. There is not backlight on restart. If I hold power button for few seconds it will shut down. Then when I press it again it will start OK. It will not give any message saying the windows did not shut down properly. I will try to unistall touchscreen drivers to see if that is the problem.

I read that if you have stuff plugged in the usb when restarting or powering (cannot remember) vista will give you black screen. Maybe since the touchscreen controller is not longer controlled by vista driver (remember it plugs in via USB) this is why it happens. I will have to do more testing today.

Anyone with any suggestions?

Thanks

Btw...Expect to see some more pictures later on

 

BIOS recovery? :|

 

Really nice work mate