solar powered laptop

[chrisstopher]

@Sensei

 

I'm trying to make a laptop  that is solar powered purely from scratch  could someone help me plan it out
ill be editing this list as I go but right now I'm working on:
motherboard
solar panels
finding a good online PCB designer that I can use to design a motherboard 
The time limit is till January 1st but I have to make 3 ideas but since this is the 1 I'm most enthusiastic about ill spend a month on this idea and 2 weeks on the other ideas 
my questions are {what other parts would I have to create to make this a fully working laptop that can type up on a word editor and send emails it's supposed to be a baseboard working computer }
if you have any contributions or anything that you would like to add thanks also this is my last post of the day but ill try to edit this response to reply to u guys 
good suggestions would be :
[things I need to add to this list because it is all from scratch and the deadlines January 1st only things allowed are PCB printers and other tools and services like 3d printing services used for printing out the cooling fan]
[coding the os I don't mean coding an OS with every dingle dangle in their just a word editor and connecting all the peripherals, managing files, and this is huge if I have time somehow  adding an internet browser cause ]
[a nice lithium-ion battery.size to be determined but it will be custom made so if you have any suggestions for how places to order one it would be nice how much mAh it should be depending on how much it cost to run since its gonna be low power]
[If you could give me some more suggestions on coding languages and where to start if there are any good teaching platforms like code gym for java or if there are any good books like black hat python] 
this is for an engineering project I thought it would be better to address it head-on with 1 large post instead of those 2 posts from earlier today but for all those who answer your responses won't be in vain right now I'm waiting for more notebooks to come in because my other engineering/coding  notebooks are filled up with doodles 

well I think I put everything in here later ill edit the other requirements in if you got any advice it would be helpful 

is this better doing it in a more condensed post instead of multiple posts

[MigL]

One question only...
Is the solar power for recharging the battery only, or do you want to run off it as well?

-If you intend to run off solar, I assume you'll spend a lot of time outdoors. ; you're going to need a very bright screen.
-You might wanna give yourself a little more than a month, as companies like Lenovo and Apple, with much higher development budgets than you, still haven't been able to accomplish this.
-This pretty well limits you to very low power chips, based on the ARM architecture ( think Raspberry Pi and Arduino SoC ); you certainly can't use X86 architecture ( not even Atom ).
-You would want the solar panel to have optimum orientation to the Sun; that would be screen/keyboard areas on a standard laptop form factor, so not particularly suitable. Even optimally, a 1/2 square foot ( 6 x12 inch, fairly large ) panel will produce a peak ( instantaneous ) of slightly better than 7 Watts.

If solar is intended for recharging only, will you be using it only at night and re-charging during the day ?
( maybe this is the reason Lenovo or Apple aren't developing such an impractical product )
 

[Ken Fabian]

You can buy solar laptop chargers, usually having some kind of battery included, that charge DC directly. I'm sure simple solar plus small "camping" inverter to local AC voltage/frequency is possible using standard plug in chargers. Having solar built in - back of fold out screen - would likely work too, but more for placing in sun when not in use, with more time like that than in use. It would not work so well during use.

[chrisstopher]

could you show me some rasberry pi chips and where ic ould buy them i have a pi4 and 3 pi0ws but i never knew they had chips for sale 

14 hours ago, MigL said:

One question only...
Is the solar power for recharging the battery only, or do you want to run off it as well?

-If you intend to run off solar, I assume you'll spend a lot of time outdoors. ; you're going to need a very bright screen.
-You might wanna give yourself a little more than a month, as companies like Lenovo and Apple, with much higher development budgets than you, still haven't been able to accomplish this.
-This pretty well limits you to very low power chips, based on the ARM architecture ( think Raspberry Pi and Arduino SoC ); you certainly can't use X86 architecture ( not even Atom ).
-You would want the solar panel to have optimum orientation to the Sun; that would be screen/keyboard areas on a standard laptop form factor, so not particularly suitable. Even optimally, a 1/2 square foot ( 6 x12 inch, fairly large ) panel will produce a peak ( instantaneous ) of slightly better than 7 Watts.

If solar is intended for recharging only, will you be using it only at night and re-charging during the day ?
( maybe this is the reason Lenovo or Apple aren't developing such an impractical product )

what os would you recomend
 

 

[MigL]

Raspberry Pi uses a Broadcom processor, an in-house implementation of the ARM architecture ( see Acorn Business Machines RISC Microprocessor, a 32 bit outgrowth of the 8 bit MOStech 6502 processor used in the Apple II and Commodore/Atari ). I have no idea where you could source such a chip n small quantities. Your best bet would be either using a Pi motherboard ( with additions ), or cannibalizing one for chips ( de-soldering SM chips is difficult ).
Here is some info on Raspberry Pi hardware ...

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/

[chrisstopher]

do know where i could buy some other weak chips that could run a linux os 

[Ghideon]

18 hours ago, chrisstopher said:

if you got any advice it would be helpful 

One way is to check what others have tied and why they are not in the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_notebook may give some hints; it is not a very good wikipedia page but the fact is that all the page's references to various manufacturers and models seems outdated and/or links are not working. 

 

[MigL]

Two Broadcom distributors show up n a google search ...

https://www.mouser.com/manufacturer/broadcom/

http://www.ameya360.com/mfrdetail/broadcom?utm_campaign=English&utm_medium=Google&utm_source=adwords&utm_content=guanjianzi&utm_term=Broadcom

Otherwise you might try searching through eBay for used parts.
The Pi 4 uses the BCM2711 4 core SoC, but that needs 4W; you might be better off with the lower power single or double core versions in earlier Pi.
 

[chrisstopher]

how easy do you think this would be to make