Atrix 4G Lapdock - Portable Monitor

I’ve had the need for a portable monitor for a while. While at school/work, using a single display feels extremely cramped. Even though my laptop has a 4K display, it’s still only 15 inches large and with display scaling turned on (because you definitely need it at this size) to even 175%, it still isn’t that much screen real estate.

For reference, I’m used to working with this much screen real estate at my desk:

I’ve had the need for a portable monitor for a while. While at school/work, using a single display feels extremely cramped. Even though my laptop has a 4K display, it’s still only 15 inches large and with display scaling turned on (because you definitely need it at this size) to even 175%, it still isn’t that much screen real estate.(for reference, I’m used to working with this much screen real estate at my desk.)

For obvious reasons, I can’t exactly just take my wall of monitors with me on the go for school/work. But still, I find it to be extremely annoying to be stuck to just one display, and my productivity definitely suffers as a result.

Unfortunately, most portable monitors generally aren’t that great, and are overpriced.

I stumbled across this video from Adafruit, in which they use a Motorola Atrix 4G Laptop Dock as a display for their mobile Raspberry Pi project. That’s cool I thought, but I wonder if it would work for other devices? Turns out that yes, it does.

The Atrix 4G Laptop dock was released as an accessory for the 2012 Atrix 4G Smartphone (duh). It was designed for mobile users to literally run a single device — their smartphone. Use your phone as you normally would, and then when it was time to get work done, dock it with this accessory and all of a sudden, your phone is transformed into a (small) laptop with a full keyboard and touchpad. When docked, the phone ran it’s own custom version of Linux to scale better for the larger display, and even let you interact with native android features (calls, texts, apps) without undocking. Pretty neat.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite take off like they had hoped, and the Atrix 4G was discontinued. This however is a good thing, as the laptop docks are going for super cheap used on eBay. I managed to snag one for $40. Specs:

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Setting it up

All you need are a few adapters, to go from a Male Micro-HDMI on the laptop dock to Male full-size HDMI on your device. Likewise if you want to use the keyboard / trackpad (on something like a Raspberry Pi), just need adapter cables to go from Male Micro USB to full-size fuck.

Adapters needed to order:

• Female Micro HDMI to Male full size HDMI
• 1.5ft Female to Male HDMI extension cable
• Micro USB Extension cable
• plus any cable you have with a standard full size USB male end

Once you have all the adapters, you’ll simply plug them in like this:

Lapdock Male Micro HDMI → Female Micro HDMI to Male full size HDMI → 1.5ft Female to Male HDMI extension cable

Lapdock Micro HDMI → Female Micro USB (stripped, data wires soldered → full size Male USB, power wires soldered → Male Micro USB) (only required to use the dock and power Raspberry Pi simultaneously. See the Adafruit video for more details).

And you’re done! Enjoy your new portable display/laptop, usable with any device with HDMI and USB. It has worked flawlessly with every device I’ve tested including my Lenovo Y50 laptop, Raspberry Pi 2, LG G2 (with SlimPort Adapter), and Playstation 3. Audio over HDMI and USB host on the hub works as well, no additional configuration needed - just plug and play. Below are a few pictures of it in action.