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Modding a Vostro 3750 laptop to have touch screen. Looking for advice.
Hi,
I am looking for any advice I can get regarding the installation of a touch screen panel into my Dell Vostro 3750 laptop. Willing to spend over 100$.
This will be a Christmas project so I have time to prepare every detail.
Please recommend brands, products, assembly/installation techniques or even a full guide. I have never done this before. But I take apart laptops and PCs as a hobby and for a living both, so I am not inexperienced either. Feel free to use technical jargon.
Technical specifications and my special needs:
• The current screen is the default that came with the machine: 17.3" LED.
• I am not sure whether I need to buy a 17" or 17.3" touch screen kit for that. Windows 8 makes heavy use of edge and corner pixels, so I will probably go with 17.3". Get better 1:1 mapping that way too. On the other hand 17" would not flow over the edges. Help me decide?
• Also, here is a mysterious discrepancy: The screen dimensions say it is 15.5"×8.98", but then sqrt(15.5^2 + 8.98^2) says that would be 17.9". Probably because it is not an edge-to-edge display panel, but thought I would mention it just to be thorough.
• I would prefer a resistive touch screen, as capacitive does not work with gloves and my favorite stylus. But it is just a preference, not requirement -- capacitive is fine if that is what you have experience with.
• I reside in Hungary, Europe, so international shipping is probably not avoidable.
• If I could also upgrade the current WXGA++ (1600×900) to a nice full HD 1080p (1920×1080) resolution during this project, then I would be very happy. Even if it costs me another 100$.
Misc note - Almost everything is modded out already in this beast of a machine. I changed:
Wireless card to a much higher powered one so the hotspot it generates can go through the concrete and loam walls in my house all the way to my tablet in the bathroom.
Swapped out my DVD drive for an SSD with a cheap Optical bay adapter. It is my primary drive now. Turned the original drive into a portable external DVD burner, no case.
Got an i7 CPU recently. The i5 just was not enough for streaming and playing some of my more CPU-intensive games at once.
Added custom cooling all around the inside of the laptop. Just some thin flat heat pipes and heat spreaders. During peak performance it was always hovering at 90°C before, down to 70°C after this mod.
9 cell battery which bumps up the form factor a bit (stick out the back) but lasts 9+ hours instead of the default 2-4.
And I added more RAM and storage of course.
The only thing left to mod after touch screen will be a GPU upgrade, or the hooking up of a spare dual GPU build I have externally, but then I would be using three to four graphics cards which sounds silly. (Integrated + dedicated + externals)
I will be rating all useful posts 5 stars and clicking like on them. And if you leave your PayPal address, at the time of completion I will donate 25$, 10$ and 5$ to the top 3 most helpful posters respectively as a Christmas gift. You are doing research for me, so you might as well get paid for it. I hope donations are allowed here.
Thanks,
Daniel "3ICE" Berezvai
I am looking for any advice I can get regarding the installation of a touch screen panel into my Dell Vostro 3750 laptop. Willing to spend over 100$.
This will be a Christmas project so I have time to prepare every detail.
Please recommend brands, products, assembly/installation techniques or even a full guide. I have never done this before. But I take apart laptops and PCs as a hobby and for a living both, so I am not inexperienced either. Feel free to use technical jargon.
Technical specifications and my special needs:
• The current screen is the default that came with the machine: 17.3" LED.
• I am not sure whether I need to buy a 17" or 17.3" touch screen kit for that. Windows 8 makes heavy use of edge and corner pixels, so I will probably go with 17.3". Get better 1:1 mapping that way too. On the other hand 17" would not flow over the edges. Help me decide?
• Also, here is a mysterious discrepancy: The screen dimensions say it is 15.5"×8.98", but then sqrt(15.5^2 + 8.98^2) says that would be 17.9". Probably because it is not an edge-to-edge display panel, but thought I would mention it just to be thorough.
• I would prefer a resistive touch screen, as capacitive does not work with gloves and my favorite stylus. But it is just a preference, not requirement -- capacitive is fine if that is what you have experience with.
• I reside in Hungary, Europe, so international shipping is probably not avoidable.
• If I could also upgrade the current WXGA++ (1600×900) to a nice full HD 1080p (1920×1080) resolution during this project, then I would be very happy. Even if it costs me another 100$.
Misc note - Almost everything is modded out already in this beast of a machine. I changed:
Wireless card to a much higher powered one so the hotspot it generates can go through the concrete and loam walls in my house all the way to my tablet in the bathroom.
Swapped out my DVD drive for an SSD with a cheap Optical bay adapter. It is my primary drive now. Turned the original drive into a portable external DVD burner, no case.
Got an i7 CPU recently. The i5 just was not enough for streaming and playing some of my more CPU-intensive games at once.
Added custom cooling all around the inside of the laptop. Just some thin flat heat pipes and heat spreaders. During peak performance it was always hovering at 90°C before, down to 70°C after this mod.
9 cell battery which bumps up the form factor a bit (stick out the back) but lasts 9+ hours instead of the default 2-4.
And I added more RAM and storage of course.
The only thing left to mod after touch screen will be a GPU upgrade, or the hooking up of a spare dual GPU build I have externally, but then I would be using three to four graphics cards which sounds silly. (Integrated + dedicated + externals)
I will be rating all useful posts 5 stars and clicking like on them. And if you leave your PayPal address, at the time of completion I will donate 25$, 10$ and 5$ to the top 3 most helpful posters respectively as a Christmas gift. You are doing research for me, so you might as well get paid for it. I hope donations are allowed here.
Thanks,
Daniel "3ICE" Berezvai
3ICE
17 Posts
0
November 3rd, 2013 04:00
Your advice is to give up, and I will follow your advice if nobody else has a different opinion.
But right now I am looking at this: ebay.com/4-Wire-Resistive-Touch-Screen-Panel-Kit-17-widescreen-Laptop-LCD
Specifically this picture is very promising:
And am thinking to myself that it appears to be a simple and straightforward process. I'll just have a short USB cord sticking out the side of my laptop and my screen will be a few millimeters thicker, possibly preventing me from closing the lid completely. But I'm prepared to add spacers, even got some very nice rubber bits for the job.
The touch panel is a transparent layer added on top of the original LCD screen, it does not replace it. And it plugs into any usb port. Externally.
I am confident I can mod it all into my laptop, but I still want someone to reassure me that it'll work before I drop the 100$ and wait two weeks for the crazy international shipping.
free_refil
86 Posts
1
November 5th, 2013 12:00
If you're using a USB device for touch input, you won't need to worry about your BIOS. You just need to disassemble the laptop and see what kind of space you're working with. You certainly want to get as close to a 1:1 mapping and the correct overlay. The one demo'd above looks to have a decently sized cable that runs it, so you can probably run it along with the wifi cables or LCD cable into the lower case. Then it's just a matter of hooking it up to USB. You can go the external route if you want to, but I'd rather find a way to may disconnect a USB connector and solder the overlay directly to the USB header. All in all, if you're comfortable with this type of work, I don't see why you need confirmation in Dell's forum of all places...
3ICE
17 Posts
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October 30th, 2013 22:00
ejn63
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November 2nd, 2013 14:00
Doesn't look like this model ever shipped with a touchscreen -- that being the case, unless you can build yourself a custom mainboard and write yourself a custom BIOS, no matter how many parts you throw at the system, you're not going to succeed.
3ICE
17 Posts
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November 2nd, 2013 15:00
Thank you for your response. That's disappointing to hear.
But what about a USB Touch Screen DIY Kit?
The package includes a controller board and the only hardware contact it makes with the laptop is a USB plug.
Full contents:
1 x Touch Screen Panel
1 x USB controller board
1 x Driver software
1 x USB cable
1 x 4pin cable
I'm definitely not looking to replace my Motherboard again.
My BIOS is already "custom", however it isn't anything serious. I just changed some strings in the original A05 update and reflashed it.
I didn't think touch screens would need a new BIOS. USB has always been Plug and Play in my world.
3ICE
17 Posts
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November 2nd, 2013 15:00
This forum system is glitchy. This was the second time editing my post triggered automatic moderation! My edited post was hidden until approval. So I reposted it. (See below.)
ejn63
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November 2nd, 2013 16:00
See the original reply - there's no way to add a usb connector to the mainboard, so you'd need to build your own board. And yes, the BIOS would need to be rewritten to support a screen that the factory never included support for.
3ICE
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November 3rd, 2013 01:00
ejn63
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November 3rd, 2013 02:00
I'm not sure why you are even asking, then. You've made up your mind that you can do this; go ahead and try.
ejn63
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November 3rd, 2013 07:00
Doing this on a desktop is very different from doing it on a notebook. The notebook's BIOS must be coded to work with the screen you install. Even on systems that are sold with and without touchscreens, the mainboard is different between the two versions such that the screen, mainboard and data cable must be changed to convert a non-touch model to a touchscreen model.
So, if you're willing to design and build your own mainboard and code your own BIOS, as above - you may be able to make it work. You will not be able to make it work using the existing mainboard.
No one can reassure you it'll work - because the odds are the job is not possible to succeed.
3ICE
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November 5th, 2013 22:00
I don't either. Thank you for clearing up everything I was concerned about. My Christmas project is a go!