DIY Portable Display from Old Tablet

If you're interested in building your own portable DIY display, this article might be just what you need.

If you happen to have an old tablet lying around, one that's been unused for years and doesn't serve much of a purpose, you can try removing the screen and preparing a driver board. With these, you can create your own compact, portable display.

You can use acrylic to make a case, and the result will look like this. After assembling it, you can connect it to an action camera you use for video recording. This allows you to monitor the footage in real-time while you're operating, preventing situations where actions off-camera go unrecorded.

Here's how the front side looks:

The driver board requires a 12V power supply, but you can modify it to work with both USB and battery power, switching between the two using a power switch. When the switch is on, it uses battery power. When the switch is off and you plug in the power source, it simultaneously charges the battery and powers the screen. At this point, the battery is only charging and not discharging. The driver board has a separate switch to turn the screen on and off. If you plan to use it on a desk, you can place all the connections on top.

The back can be made with a simple aluminum-plastic board for the rear case.

After testing, the display works with an external power source while charging, using a 500mA charging board. So, charging and power supply can happen simultaneously, and a regular USB plug should be enough to support it.

That's it!