Custom diy lcd display with active pen support.

Samjohnston98 · April 22, 2019

I'm a college student and I just upgraded from a surface pro to a Razer blade and the only thing I miss is the ability to take notes with a pen and store them on one note (it's a lot more helpful than you may think). I've seen videos of people taking old lcd screens and sticking a universal driver on the back of old laptop LCDs but they're not even capacitive touch( https://youtu.be/CfirQC99xPc ).

I would like to take this a step further and make a DIY usb display with active pen support like Wacom or N-Trig. I tried googling the DS-D5000 A1 & DS-A5048 B2 (5th generation) which are the latest N-Trig chips found in the the surface book and pro devices, but I only got a bunch of unsafe and sketchy Chinese websites. What I'm trying to figure out is how the pen data is interfaced with the computer. Is it combined with the displays analog data? Is it a separate digital data line? Is the the data proprietary and unusable outside the prefabricated design on a motherboard? I really want to figure out if there's a way for window to see the display on the usb and use the standard drivers it would use if the display were directly connected to the motherboard. After watching Linus' recent video with the portable displays, if this is feasible even with the most intensive designing I would find a product like this very useful because plugging this kind of display into my phone and annotate pdfs at a small desk using Samsung dex and a pen would be a game changer. Especially when I don't need another $600 tablet.

This is the first forum post I've ever made, any help would be appreciated. This idea or field seems pretty shallow at this time, or I just have no idea where to look. Thanks.

samleung2013 · May 18, 2019

Hello, I saw your post and so that I registered the account of the forum to answer your question as I also wanted to diy the monitor by myself in the past. English is my second language so there may be some grammatical error. I also wanted to DIY a USB powered display with N-trig or wacom in the past, I had dig deep into google and many forum and I did found surface pro's panel attach with N-trig board. However, I still found it useless as you would never know which pin is for which function as there don't have any datasheet around. Long story short, I finally end up finding a 13.3 inch portable external monitor with N-trig chip embed on it and it can support 1024-level pressure level and then it is driven by usb C for power and touch& pen signal and a mini hdmi port for the display signal. The monitor is sold and still selling in Tabao.

So let me answer the question you raised

Is it combined with the displays analog data?

I think the N-trig chip itself is separate with the display signal but Microsoft may use the same plug to transfer both monitor signal and touch signal

Is the the data proprietary and unusable outside the prefabricated designon a motherboard?