DIY Razer Project Valerie
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,823 words · ~9 min read
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razor project Valerie the portable
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triple 4k monitor gaming system they
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showed off earlier this year at
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CES we all heard the rumors that I stole
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it from their Booth during cleanup at the show but I'm going to let you guys
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in on a little secret I didn't steal it in fact I
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wouldn't even want it because truth be
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told I've been working on my own triple
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monitor portable battle station laptop
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concept for the last 20 minutes that I
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call rear prej voer
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be and I'm going to show you guys
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exactly how it
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works hp's new omen lineup comes
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equipped with Intel's 7th generation core i7 processor check it out at the
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link in the video description all right so first things
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first and I assure you that my decision
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to use a razor blade Pro as the basis of
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my prej has nothing to do with the fact
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that Razer also did the same thing with their project see mine's a preck there's
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is a project no similarity whatsoever is to start
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with the Razer Blade Pro as a basis it's
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already a fairly portable battle station
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class computer with a core i7 6700
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K GTX 1080 Graphics 32 gigs of RAM PCIe
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raid zero ssds pretty much you oh my
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finger is stuck freaking name it I'm not a huge fan of the keyboard but
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that's okay okay so what was good about
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project Valerie it was self-contained as a single unit so you could just slide it
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into your backpack as one piece I mean
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sort of they didn't actually have any of that stuff working yet when we were
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there the uh the like one that was
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supposed to kind of like go out and then fold in that was all fixed in place just
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as kind of a of a mockup and the number
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two is it was truly portable so the idea
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was that sure it was pretty thick but it
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could be taken with you uh set up in the local Starbucks and run in either single
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monitor mode so without folding out the additional displays or in triple monitor
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mode without requiring being plugged
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into the wall so my plan is actually to
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use a solution that I brought up during my show cut coverage of Razor take on
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this by using portable USB powered
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monitors I mean sure I may give up some
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of the Elegance of not having everything folded together but I have the advantage
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of not needing to carry my two extra
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monitors out with me when I don't intend to use
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them okay we're going to get started on construction in a minute but first let's
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have a look at the monitors we're using so these are made by a company called
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GIC we've actually covered one of their products before but this is a new one
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this is the onlap 1503h and other than being like portable
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it's basically a monitor so you got your buttons on the side you've got HDMI and
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VGA in unfortunately using proprietary
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ports uh but they did send me pretty much all the cables I could possibly
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need as well as their dock connector that goes on the back for one of them so
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all of that should be pretty straightforward for our project and uh
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it's powered right with this USB type-c connector right down here on the bottom
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left now normally the idea would be that
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you mount it using the uh included metal
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stand and rubber magnet thing on the back but of course we have other plans
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okay so if everything seemed really well planned out and structured about this
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video up until now that's because
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I had a plan this is the part where for the
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first time I actually attempt to uh to
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do this so here we go in order to keep the
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io on the side of the monitor out of the
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way of my mounting strategy which I have
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not yet determined what it will actually be so these are like they're pretty
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light but they definitely do have some
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he to them I'm thinking maybe I could take off this metal bracket see if I can
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save a little bit of weight there on one of them I'm going to be using their dock
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connector so the one that mounts on the right side of the monitor it's kind of
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unfortunate how freaking long the cables
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are on this so you can see right there
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we don't need to have any cables sticking out of it so we can go like
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that and like like
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like that okay then on the other one I
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can use the cables that were included in the Box because they only sent me one of
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those dock
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adapters okay so cables included in the
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Box here we go so we plug in the proprietary HDMI I and our power
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in with the objective
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then of running that puppy right there
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yeah boy
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okay so what I can't do with the bracket
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here is have these monitors sit in front
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of the laptop so it looks like these are going to have to go on from the back and
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because of the length of these cables I think I'm actually going to be better
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off having the uh dock adapter one on
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this side and then the other one see
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with the cables coming off here on the other side and wrapping them
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around sort of maybe
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oh no problem no problem we got this so all I need to
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figure out now is what type of mounting strategy I
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want to use we got Tuck tape we got Gaff
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tape which I'm already pretty sure isn't going to work we've got double-sided
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velcro tape and we've got this badass 3M
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Adhesive that we use for our GoPros now this and tuct tape have the disadvantage
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of not being very uh removable how you
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say so I'm going to try and make this
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work with this Velcro stuff let's see
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how it
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goes now obviously given that these monitors actually
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have mounting points on them like screw
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mounting points points if Jake was here I could have him whip up something on
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the 3D printer or something but it's me
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so double-sided tape Fraser's going to be super stoked
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on getting this laptop back with like velcro all over it this stuff leaves a
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wicked residue
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okay so it's actually kind of moment of
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Truth time here what kind of angle do we
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want let's go with that give me some
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guidance here man okay actually here you know what let's just
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there line it like
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that oh boy okay here we
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go oh yeah boy yeah so theoretically you
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need two USB plugs for power for this sucker
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but I have had them working with just
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one so let's see
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if wait for it yeah all right we got
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one one monitor working now it's time to apply what we
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learned which is nothing of course
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to the other
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side
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okay
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boom yeah think it's going to
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survive do you even lift rer Blade
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Pro yeah boy yeah you do now we just got
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to plug this one in and do note that
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there is still a USB port available on
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the left side for your uh USB plug-in
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needs you know your mouse your uh thumb drive and the second HDMI output
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provided by the Thunderbolt Port
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because what project wouldn't be complete without a dongle in today's
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world so the Thunderbolt Port gives us our second
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HDMI
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and come
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on where's my cursor the computer just
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crash
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oh yeah there it is look at that working
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perfectly DIY project Valerie the cursor moves
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seamlessly from one to the next and we
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have achieved the goals that we set out
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to achieve so goal number one triple
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monitors on a laptop and goal number two the ability
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to albe it with some additional bulk
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take our completely cableless solution no need to
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be plugged into the
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wall and
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easily
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easily easily
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oh did that panel just break this one's
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fine easily take it with us
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on the go in one
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compact package so thanks for watching guys I
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hope you enjoyed this fun little video on DIY project Valerie now
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obviously I fully understand that this
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is not a very elegant solution but the point of this video much the same way
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that razer's video was more about the
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concept of triple monitor laptops the point of this video was the concept of
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portable multim monitor Solutions and where they could go in the future what
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I'd like to see is especially with USB
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type-c and its incredible power delivery characteristics I'd like to see a beefy
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Thunderbolt Port that could power two of these monitors that are kind of Daisy
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together across the back off of a single port or something like that that would
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be super cool Amazon you may remember them from
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recommend it I have two Amazon Prime memberships I actually do one for Canada
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