The Wall-Mounted PC

Hang an old laptop in the kitchen or hallway to create a touchscreen Web panel and message center
By the H2.0 Staff Posted 01.22.2007 at 3:00 am 0 Comments

by John B. Carnett: John B. Carnett

Make a Wall-Mounted PC

Cost: $200
Time: 4
Hours
Easy | | | | |
Hard


  1. Find an old laptop: Any PC or Mac will do. We used a five-year-old IBM ThinkPad.
  • Enclose it: We welded a frame out of perforated steel, but you could use plastic, wood or even cardboard. Find plans at popsci.com/wallpc.
  • Add a touchscreen: The MagicTouch overlay plugs into a USB port and costs $160 at touch screens.com, but you can find similar models on eBay for as little as $40 (some require a stylus).
    Be sure to get one made for a laptop (not a full-size monitor) and matches your screen size.
  • Give it Wi-Fi: Use a PC-card adapter (from $15; newegg.com), because it leaves your USB ports free for the touchscreen and keyboard.
  • Plug in a keyboard: Instead of trying to type on the vertical laptop, we added a Logitech PlayStation keyboard ($10; amazon.com) to the flip-down panel, which is activated by a lever and stops at 90 degrees for easy typing.

    • Three Things To Do With Your Wall PC

    Make tasty meals: Lots of sites, including
    epicurious.com, allrecipes.com and foodtv.com, list recipes, but uktvfood.co.uk offers more than 1,000 video recipes, so you can hit â€play†and start cooking.

    Keep track of everyone: Set up an account
    for your family at backpackit.com, which lets you
    create a calendar, post photos, leave notes,
    and set reminders. Everyone can have his
    or her own page, and you can update the
    site from anywhere.

    Show Off Your Photos Set the laptop´s screen saver to Slickr (free; cellardoorsw.com), which automatically makes a slideshow out of photos from your Flickr account.


    See the next page for more detailed assembly notes.

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