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 2:00 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.

    Page 1 of 2 12next ›last »
    Want to read more articles like this, plus tips and tricks, home hacks, DIY projects, and more? Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!

    0 Comments

    Popular Tags

    Regular Features


    138 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.

    Innovation Challenges

    Make your ideas part of the revolution
    Learn morePowered by Innocentive



    Popular Science+ For iPad

    Each issue has been completely reimagined for your iPad. See our amazing new vision for magazines that goes far beyond the printed page



    Download Our App

    Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone or Android phone with full articles, images and offline viewing



    Follow Us On Twitter

    Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed


    February 2012: The Future of Fun

    Science is reinventing play, from extreme sports to gamification to ridiculous roller coasters to the playgrounds of tomorrow, and this issue is chock full of fun. Also, on a less fun note: Did global warming destroy my hometown?


    circ-top-header.gif
    circ-cover.gif