A Small Portable USB-Powered Monitor Perfect for Working with Headless Systems
This portable mini monitor designed by Tjiani Lucht is perfect for occasional work on headless single-board computers and servers.
Most casual users today tend to think of computers as the complete package, including a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. But computers can run happily without those, which is much more efficient and cost effective for servers and other systems that do their thing without direct local oversight. However, even those headless systems need occasional maintenance and if that can’t be handled remotely over a network, then a monitor is necessary. This portable mini monitor designed by Tjiani Lucht is perfect for those situations.
Lucht built this for working with Raspberry Pi SBCs (single-board computers) and other headless systems. They could, of course, connect up a standard monitor. But those are big, bulky, and require a nearby and accessible power outlet. Though it might not sound like a big deal, that can be frustratingly inconvenient. Lucht’s DIY monitor solves those problems. It is small and easy to carry in a shoulder bag, and it can get its power from a USB port on the headless system or from a USB power bank — no more hunting for an unused outlet in the server room. It even has a built-in set of speakers, with an amplifier and a USB audio interface, in case sound is important for the job at hand.
It only cost about $75 for Lucht to build this monitor. The display panel is a 5” TFT model from Adafruit with a resolution of 800×400 and an LED backlight. That is a bare panel with a 40-pin 24-bit RGB interface, so Lucht added an Adafruit TFP401-based driver board that accepts HDMI/DVI input. A bare USB-C port on a breakout board acts as a power input jack. That also connects to the USB audio board, which then feeds analog audio to the amplifier that pumps sound out through the speakers.
Those components all fit into an attractive 3D-printed enclosure. The base contains everything but the display panel, which fits into a hinged frame. The display can fold down for transportation, then flip up when it is time to do some work.
Lucht says that they designed this monitor for their own use and so it isn’t optimized for others to build, but they provided the STL files so that anyone can give it a try.